Blog and Earn at Home

When you blog for money you need to create your own content (and lots of it!), implement advertisement programs like Google AdSense and WidgetBucks, and last but not least – you need traffic.

In our offline lives we dread it, but online we embrace it. I want to give you 5 ways to start driving traffic to your blog today. With a little time and patience, you will slowly start to increase your viewer ship.

(In no particular order)

5.) Post comments on other blogs.

Blogs are everywhere – there’s certainly not a shortage of them. You should have no problem finding other bloggers in your niche that are popular and interesting. Bookmark those that you like, follow their topics daily, and if you find something that sparks your interest – comment.

Become a participating voice in the community. The more interesting your comments are, the more likely your peers will follow you to your blog. And who knows – you might stand out among the crowd and be recognized by the author, which can spin off into better opportunities.

4.) Register with blog networks like: Technorati, BlogCatalog, and MyBlogLog

It’s important that you get your blog out there for others to see. You can start the process by submitting to search engines, but that’s just the beginning. Technorati, BlogCatalog, and MyBlogLog are just a few of the high profile blog networks on the web. Register with them, network with other people in your releated area, and get your word out.

When you register with these services remember a couple of things:

1.) Create a detailed profile. Let people know a little bit about you and draw them in. Without that personal interaction people may flee quickly.

2.) Tag your blog properly. Tags are very important – they’re usually one or two word descriptions of your blog. So for example my blog would fall under categories like: Money, Business, and Finance. Dig around the specific service and look for popular tags and try to use those for your blog. It allows people who are interested in these topics to easily find your site.


3.) Register with several forums.

Do a Google search for forums that are related to your niche and register. Try to be an active voice in the community. People will flock to you if you’re interesting. Not only that but it allows you to find out what others are doing and what makes them appealing.

When you register with a forum, make sure to fill out the profile, similar to the blogging services. And equally as important – make a signature that is a direct link to your blog. Your signature is shown in every post that you make – helping you gain visibility. This is all the more reason to create thought provoking discussions.


2.) Social Bookmarking and Article Submission.

Social networking, bookmarking, and article submissions are all the rage today – don’t let it pass you by. Some of the major networks include delicious, Furl, and of course, Digg. These sites will allow you to tag, bookmark, and submit articles that you think are interesting. What’s more interesting than your own work? People should know about it so go spread the word.


1.) StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon really falls into tip #2, but I decided to break it away from the pack because it provides quicker results. Like the rest of the social networking sites, you create a profile and network with others. But what makes StumbleUpon so darn unique, is that you can “stumble” thousands of sites that you’re interested in by the click of a button. So what does that mean for you? Well, you can stumble your own site. By doing this you get into the Stumble rotation, and any people that you network with can stumble across it as well.

In my experience StumbleUpon can bring great surges of traffic for short periods of time. Due to the nature of the service, you’re likely to get overlooked more than not; however, those that do stop – tend to stay. And if they like the site, they can rate it and review it for all the friends in their network to see. Are you getting the picture here? Your viewer ship has the potential to explode!

As with most things in life, there’s no silver bullet for getting traffic. It takes a lot of research, careful planning, networking, patience, and time. If you have what it takes and start using my recommendations, you will definitely start to see an increase. Hopefully that increase in traffic will help you blog for money.

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Home based business opportunities can offer you a fulfilling sense of self-satisfaction that you can't get anywhere else - just ask any entrepreneur. Home businesses can take up your whole time, leaving you no room for a day job, or it can be part-time to augment your income. No matter how much time you devote to your business, it is undeniable that it is invaluable in providing you with more money to buy what you want. However, a word of caution: it takes a good deal of patience and determination to develop your business and make it a success. Since there's nobody but you as the boss, you would have to solve these problems all on your own.

A business plan is essential, not only for big businesses but also for budding ones as well. Even if you're only doing business during your free time, you should consider it as an actual business too. Take some time to write down a comprehensive outline of your plan. Fill out each detail, from operations, to target market, to your vision of the business in the long run. Through this, you will be able to track your progress and you can have a clear view of where your business is going.

Budding entrepreneurs are well advised to find themselves a mentor, especially if they're encountering a lot of unforeseen problems. You need to find someone with a lot of experience already, someone who has already experienced what you experienced and found ways to solve it. You can always forge a path of your own, but it can be considerably more difficult and time-consuming, and you might lose heart and just give up. A business plan complimented by the right mentor will almost guarantee your success.

Not only should the physical aspects of the business be prepared, you need to prepare yourself mentally as well. It is very important to have determination and a desire for success. You will have to invest a lot of effort and time into your business, but it would all be worth it. Because this is your own home-based business, no one will tell you what to do, when to work, or how to work. This is why you need an enormous amount of discipline.

Work from home business opportunities will take some time in order for it to become a success, but these tips will definitely get you going on your road to self-fulfillment.

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In today’s society everything from grocery shopping to ordering pizza can be done online? Lets face it, everyone wants convenience. Today’s society is fast paced. It is no surprise that most business owners have taken their products and services and placed it online. In the present day and age it is almost impossible to have a successful business unassociated with the Internet.

The Internet opens new opportunities for any sort of business. Such as: low overheads, convenience for customers and clients, and presents various methods to display important and relevant information about your business to your clients and so that they remain up to date and well informed.

As a new business owner, starting an online business may be your first alternative. The question that arises is how to go about starting an online business? You may have heard of many who have tried and failed or may have succeeded but are not as successful. This may be due to lack of tools and research.

Research is very vital to the success of any business. Once you have decided what type of online business you would like to develop, then research the topic. The first step is to research your competitors. Research the products or services they offer. Find out as much information as you can. What makes their business successful? Who are their target audience? Where do they advertise? What products or services sell most?

Now that you have educated yourself and you feel comfortable with the knowledge you have gained it is time to research and develop your business plan and expense report. It is always recommended to prepare these documents especially, if you are planning to apply for a business loan or working with investors. Once these steps are taken care of it is time to focus on other key objectives.

The main focus of an online business is the website. Your website will act as the middle-man when it comes to selling and buying. The domain name you select is very important and should be chosen wisely. You may have already chosen your business name; but is it catchy enough to be used for your domain name? Your domain name should be catchy, easy to remember and unique.
After deciding an appropriate domain name, it is required to select a good web hosting company. When searching for a web hosting company there are some basic points you need to consider:

1. Reliability:
It is very important to find a web hosting company that is reliable and have a low percentage of downtime. As a new online business owner, your business needs to be up and operating at all times. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. Research the web hosting company of your choice and it may be a good idea to find a web hosting company that offers a money back guarantee.

2. Server Hard Drive Space:
Keep in mind that most web pages average 10-50 kilobytes in size. It is important to cover all of your web pages. It is recommended that you select a package which offers web space more than your requirements to be on the safe side.

3. Customer Care or Technical Support:
We have all been in a situation as a customer where you order something online and have question but there are no answers. In most cases, technical support is offered in the Web Hosting package. However, double check before purchasing. See how quickly the technical support center responds to your questions.

4. Secure Server:
Ordering products or service from an online business can have its consequences. Especially identify any theft and possible security issues. It is important to your customers that their information is protected and safe. Most online businesses offer this protection by having secure servers. It may be an additional cost; but it is one that is worth it.

5. POP Accounts:
Allows you access to emails sent through your website. Each account is password protected. In most cases, you will receive 5, 10, 100 or more POP Accounts. You can assign an account to all your employees.

6. Other Tools Such as FTP and Website Wizards:
If you are like most online business owners, you do not have the skill to create a website from scratch nor do you have the money to pay some expensive web site designer. In this case, a web host company that offers a web site design wizard and other tools will be of great convenience.

7. Price:
It is not impossible to find a web hosting company that offers you quality and quantity at a great price. Make sure to bargain with the company you are purchasing from as most hosting companies are willing to offer further discounts to acquire new customers.

Now it is time to create your website. Here are a few tips:

The content on your web site should be informative, interesting and well written. It should catch the attention of the reader and keep them interested. Each page should sell your product or service. Include a mailing list and maybe a referral program. Newsletters are great as well.

Building a web site is usually fun and inventive. However, marketing your website will prove to be a little more difficult. Nevertheless, some web hosting companies offer great information and additional marketing tools for an added fee.

This information should assist you in starting an online business and help you towards developing a new website for your company.

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Click Here for your Free Traffic!
We all all having the same problems everyday, we tried our best to get more people to read our blog but all our efforts are not giving any satisfying results. For me, all I manage to get is around 100 views to 200 views per day on my blog. I have been blogging for around 3 years and I manage to get some exposure for my blog but it is not an easy task. It is not easy to get people to read our blog. It would be a lot more harder for us to get traffic to our blog if we use the wrong ways to get our blog exposed to more people
.

Few days ago, I found a site with a very unique system to help websites get massive traffic for free. It is a viral system which will help your site generate a lot of new users and visitors. The visitors are all genuine visitors (Not computer generated traffic) because their system requires real people to use it and promote it so that more people or users can view our sites. Why I say the views generated on our sites will be all real people?

The site gives this system for free and it helps a lot of successful online business to generate a lot of money as well as make a lot of money. The system successfully create helps websites get more people, more users and more money because the amount of traffic generated is unlimited. Our blog (site) can get more than 1 Millions people to view every single day. The powerful system is called FreeViral System.


I am getting started to use the system and I want to share this special system with all my readers. Thank you for your continuous support. I hope that this system will help all of us get thousands and millions of visitors to our blog.

The FreeViral System is a unique system because it helps our blog (site) to get maximum exposure on the Internet. The link of our blog will appear in front more than thousand of people. The FreeViral System has successfully helped webmasters, bloggers as well as affiliate marketer increase their websites traffic and increase their online income.

It is a very unique system. I do not want to talk more about it here because you can read all about it at the FreeViral System site. No point for me to repeat the details in my blog. So, visit the site of FreeViral System and you will be AMAZED by the system.

It is a great idea and it is going to be useful to all of us. Have fun and enjoy blogging.




Click Here for your Free Traffic!

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   1. Eric Atkins

      Create a new design for your website. Not only will it be more attractive to your regular readers, but you can submit it to some CSS gallery showcase sites that feature great designs. This will give you exposure on those sites while generating a lot of traffic and backlinks from those types of sites.

   2. Dennis Coughlin

      Find the best blogs on your niche and contact the authors. Introduce yourself and send a link of your blog. This might help them to discover your blog, read it and possibly link to it.

   3. Splork

      I’ve had good success writing articles and submitting them to EzineArticles. Articles that have been written from well-researched keyword phrases and accepted by EzineArticles tend to rank very high in Google for that search term. Placing anchor text in the footer of those articles so the reader can visit my relevant website has always increased my site traffic.

   4. Alan Thomas

      Don’t forget your archives. I just posted a roundup of all interviews I did over the past seven months. One of them generated a new link and a big traffic spike from a group of users that look like they will be loyal readers now.

   5. Brian Auer

      According to my Google Analytics, about 35% of my traffic comes from other people’s blogs and 25% comes from the forums I’m active with, while search engines provide about 15%. I post comments on other blogs that are related to mine, and I post my site link in my signature at the forums.

   6. Daniel

      rush-trafficA simple tip that will probably boost your page views: install a translator plugin. I decided to use a paid plugin for this, but if I am not wrong there are some free ones as well. The translation is not very good, as you can imagine, but it helps to attract readers that are not fluent in English.

   7. Tillerman

      Be the first to write a post about the ‘Top Ten Blogs’ in your niche. The post will rank highly in any general search for blogs in your niche and other bloggers in your niche write about the post and link to it.

   8. Inspirationbit

      Well, obviously everyone knows that social bookmarking sites like Digg, del.icio.us, etc. bring lots of traffic. But I’m now submitting some of my articles to blogg-buzz.com (a digg like site for bloggers), and I always get not a bad traffic from there.

   9. Brandon Wood

      A simple trick I’ve used to increase traffic to my blog is participate in group writing projects. In fact, that’s what I’m doing right now.

  10. Kat

      I’ve recently gotten involved with several “MySpace-like” community sites that focus on my target audience. I share my thoughts in their forums, post intros to my real blog on their system blog and I’ve even created a group for my specific niche. It’s been very, very successful for me.

  11. Sridhar Katakam

      Keep track of blogs and leave comments on them. How do you know which blogs to keep track of in the first place? Add the MyBlogLog widget/code to your blog. When you notice a MyBlogLog user visiting your blog, visit that person’s in turn.

  12. Ian Delaney

      Nothing creates long-term traffic more than value. Making a post along the lines of ‘Evaluated resources for XYZ’ is useful. Useful things get linked to and they get onto del.icio.us, which is far better long-term than a digg front page.

  13. Guido

      Comment on blogs, write useful content and make good friends on forums.

  14. Grant Gerver

      Try to be polemic. I write obsessively about all-things political from the left-wing perspective in the form of humorous, sarcastic one-liners.

  15. Megan Taylor

      Participate in conversations on related blogs. Start conversations on your own blog. Don’t just post about a story and leave it at that, engage your audience.





  16. Ramen Junkie

      Newsgroups. I always see a spike when I post a review to a newsgroup.

  17. KWiz

      Write something controversial. I don’t think it’s good to write something controversial just for the purpose of getting traffic necessarily (especially if it’s only for that purpose and you’re being disingenuous), but it works.

  18. Jester

      Leave comments on other blogs. If you’re already reading them, it takes just a couple of seconds to leave a message agreeing or disagreeing with the author, you get to leave a link to your site, and you will almost ALWAYS get traffic from your comments.

  19. Engtech

      Community. It’s one word but it is the most important one when it comes to blogging. The only “blog metric” that makes sense is the vibrant community of readers it has. Building a community around your blog will bring you increased traffic, but how do you start? The boilerplate response to building traffic is always “SEO, social networking sites, and commenting on blogs” but it can be simplified to “be part of a community”. The easiest way to seed your blog is with an already existing community. But the only way to do that is to be part of the community yourself.

  20. Goerge Manty

      Post 3-5 times a day. Use ping services like pingomatic or setting up wordpress to ping some of the ping services. Engage your readers. Put up polls, ask them questions, give them quizes, free tools, etc. Make them want to come back and tell their friends about you.

  21. Mark Alves

      Participate in Yahoo Answers and LinkedIn Answers where you can demonstrate your expertise, get associated with relevant keywords and put your URL out there.
  
22. Andrew Timberlake

      A great tip for generating traffic is off-line by including your url in all your off-line liturature from business cards, letterheads, pamphlets, adverts through in-store signage if applicable. I even have our website on my vehicle.

  23. Scott Townsend

      Inform search engines and aggregators like Technorati (using the ping functionality) when your blog is updated, this should ensure maximum traffic coming from those sources.

  24. Jen Gordon

      I came upon some unexpected traffic when my blog popped up on some css design portals like www.cssmania.com and www.webcreme.com. If you can put some time into the concept behind and design for your blog, I’d recommend submitting your site to a design portal not only for
      additional traffic but to build an additional community around your site.
  
25. Chris

      Squidoo Lenses are a good way to generate traffic. By using a lense, you can generate your own custom “community” of webpages, including some of the more popular pages in your “neighborhood.” Including your own webpage in such a list is a good way of generating traffic.
  
26. Kyle

      Simplify. Pay attention to complex issues in your field of work. It may be a big long publication that is hard to wade through or a concept that is hard to grasp. Reference it and make a shorter “for dummies” version with your own lessons learned and relevant tips. When doing this, I have been surprised to find that the simplified post will appear before the more complex version in search results. Perhaps this is why it results in increased traffic; people looking for more help or clarification on the subject will land on your blog.

  27. Nick

      Participating in forums is a great way to get loyal readers. Either link baiting people in your signature or posting great advice and tips will give you high quality traffic, which will result in return visitors.

  28. Cory OBrien

      Read lots of other blogs. Leave trackbacks. Make sure your blog is optimized for search engines. Leverage social bookmarking sites like digg (both for new ideas and for traffic).

  29. Shankar Ganesh

      Just browse around MyBlogLog.com and you will surely get visitors to your blog.

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“If my blog has ((insert daily number of impressions or page views of your blog here)) how much should it be earning?”

This is one of the more common questions I get asked by bloggers just starting out with making money from their blogs.

On one level it’s a valid question to ask - after all if you’re going to put time and energy into building something it’d be great to know up front what rewards might be awaiting you.

On another level - it’s an almost impossible question to answer because there are so many factors to take into consideration.

As I look across the blogs that I am involved with (around 100 in number if you count b5media’s 80+ blogs) there is a massive variation in the earnings that blogs are pulling in. It is very difficult to make sense of it as it not just a matter of traffic levels.

For example - As I write this I’m looking at the earnings for January of three blogs that I have some involvement with (I don’t get into what specific blogs earn so don’t ask) and here’s what I see:

Blog A: For the month this blog had a total of around 20,000 page views from about half that number of visitors (ie they viewed 2 pages each. The Total earnings of this blog (all from contextual advertising) was $790.91 (USD).

Blog B: This blog had just over 40,000 page views over the month, this time from about 13,000 visitors. It’s total earnings from contextual advertising (same amount of ad units per pages as the other) was $99.08 (USD). it also earned around $35 from an affiliate program.

Blog C: Our last example is a blog that had around 160,000 page views over the month from around 80,000 visitors. It earned $515.12 from contextual ads and somewhere in the vicinity of $2,500 from affiliate programs.

Factors to Contribute to a Blog’s Earnings…

It’s pretty obvious from those figures that there is no ‘normal’ earnings based upon traffic alone. Many factors are obviously at play. Let me unpack a few:

1. Traffic Levels: While the above examples show that traffic is not the only factor at play in determining the earning capacity of a blog - it is a significant one. Whether you’re earning money from your blog directly or indirectly you are almost always going to increase your earning potential by increasing your readership.

2. Source of Traffic: Of course all not all traffic is equal when it comes to earning an income online. As I mentioned in this earlier post, blog traffic largely comes from a three sources - Loyal Readers (including RSS), Search Engines and Referral Traffic (from other sites).

Each type of traffic will have a different impact upon your earning potential depending upon your earning strategies. Lets look at each in turn:

Loyal Readers - loyal readers are a wonderful thing to have on a blog because they can add a sense of community and participation. In terms of income generation they are often good if you’re attempting to earn income from your blog via indirect methods. In my experience of picking up consulting and speaking work and even in developing products for sale - most the the opportunities have only come from established relationships that I’ve managed to build with readers.

Loyal Readers have also been known to respond to affiliate programs as a result of the trust and relationship that you might have built up with them over time. The longer term and more loyal your reader is the more weight your recommendation is likely to carry. Of course you won’t keep readers loyal for long if your recommendations are not on the money so be careful with that.

On the downside - loyal readers are generally not good for advertising in most forms. When a reader sees your blog every day Ad-blindness tends to kick in pretty quickly unless you’re pretty creative with your ads they often go unseen.

RSS readers are particularly difficult to monetize with ads on your blog as so many of them rarely see your blog if you publish full feeds rather than excerpts.

Search Engine Readers - readers coming to your blog after searching for a keyword you have used are a very different type of reader to the ‘loyal variety’ when it comes to what they respond to. Anecdotal evidence seems to indicate that visitors from SE’s quite often only stay on sites fleetingly. The typical SE users is in search of specific information and if they find it quickly they might stay for a little while but if they don’t they are likely to click on link to something else that might be a better source of information or hit their back button to return to the search engine.

This makes them almost the opposite of loyal readers in terms of indirect income earning methods. It’s very difficult to build your profile if people are one off 10 second readers (unless you’re good at making them come back).

When it comes to more direct income earning methods SE traffic is traditionally more responsive as they tend to be more aware of your ads (if they are well placed and designed) and they are actively looking for information and things to click on that might give them the info they are searching for. This is especially true for contextual advertising like AdSense which can show ads on your site that are triggered not only by what your content is about but on what people came to your blog searching for in Google (or so some people believe).

In terms of affiliate links - SE traffic is less likely to click them as a result of your profile but could be open to them more just because they are there. They can be hit and miss depending upon your topic

Referral Traffic - It is difficult to make generalizations about this category of traffic because it depends a lot on the type of site that is linking to you and the way in which they do it.

For example the last two times I’ve been linked to from Slashdot brought incredibly different results in terms of the money earned from the traffic. On one occasion there was barely any discernible difference in my AdSense earnings despite having 10 times the traffic I normally would get in a day. On the next link up earnings increased proportionally with the increase in traffic (it was and probably still is my best earning day ever). I can only really put this down to the difference in tone of the linking post at Slashdot and the type of post that I’d written (which in the later case probably triggered more relevant ads).

In general, traffic from larger sites like Digg and Slashdot don’t convert too well with advertising and affiliate programs. There is an opportunity however for capturing these first time readers and converting them into loyal ones which as we’ve said above is good for indirect income earning down the track.





4. Income Stream:The actual method you use to monetize your blog impacts the amount you might earn. This is pretty obvious so I won’t go on about it too much but it’s worth saying here as it’s a definite factor in mix when looking at other factors.

5. Topic: In the three blogs that I mention above I would say the major difference in their earning capacity was their topic.

Blog A has a pretty specialized topic that not many would be too interested in (hence it’s lower traffic). On the other side of things it has well paying ads in YPN on a per click basis and triggers ads that are very relevant to the topic. As a result despite it’s low traffic it earns quite well.

Blog B has a very popular topic but there are very few advertisers interested in buying ads with those keywords in contextual ad systems. As a result it’s Click Through Rate (CTR) is very low and click values are low also. It’s also yet to generate enough traffic to make much from impression based ads (although there is potential here - it’s a reasonably newish blog). As a result while it has more traffic than Blog A it’s earning considerably less.

Blog C is again on a popular topic which doesn’t convert brilliantly in contextual ads in terms of CTR and ad value. It does have a reasonable reputation in it’s niche and affiliate recommendations are responded to well by readers (and they have a good value per sale also which doesn’t hurt).
Why Topic Matters

Contextual Ads - Different topics and keywords within topics will trigger different ads in contextual ad programs and as a result will earn different levels ‘per click’ (I write about finding high paying ads in AdSense here).

Affiliate Programs - Similarly, different topics will open up different levels of earnings when it comes to affiliate programs. For example a blog about books that uses the Amazon program is only ever likely to make small commissions per sale as the average book might only be worth $20 and the commission with Amazon is generally in the 5-8% range. On the other hand I know of publishers in the financial website game who use affiliate programs that can pay out at $100 per sale.

Indirect Methods - Obviously different opportunities (with different income earning potential) arise for bloggers with a profile in different niches. For example a blogger known for his movie review blog might not have much demand for consulting work but could find a way to syndicate his blog to magazines or newspapers. A blogger with a good profile in the PR industry might not get picked up as a writer in magazines but could land himself a well paying job or some consulting work.

6. Age of Blog: - a good wine matures with age - as do many profitable blogs (and most profitable businesses for that matter). There are many reasons why this is the case and while some blogs do seem to rise from nowhere to dominate the blogosphere - most do not. Here’s a few reasons why blogs tend to get better with age:

Quantity of content - I find myself saying this to new bloggers repeatedly but don’t expect to get a lot of traffic to your blog until you have a substantial level of content in your archives. Of course quality of content is vital, but at least at some level numbers of posts do count and unless you’re going sell your soul and to get into splogging quantities of content take time. I’ve written more on this here and here (series).

Search Engine Optimization - While some SEO experts claim they can have you at the top of Search Engines quickly (and some can), sustaining high rankings through legitimate (white hat) methods means building a site over time. Climbing the rankings in SE’s is the result of many things including good content (lots of it) that gets links from others - both things that take time.

Reputation - Building an online profile and presence takes time n the same way that it takes time in real life. People look for consistency in your blogging overtime and will want to see that you not only talk the talk but walk the walk. As you do this you’ll find your readership grows.

Network - Connected with a good reputation comes networking opportunities. Two years ago if I had wanted to start a new blogging project with someone else I would have had little chance of convincing anyone to join me - but since that time I’ve worked hard at my relationships with fellow bloggers (and other online and offline contacts) to the point now where my problem is becoming too many opportunities to collaborate.

Web Smarts - I shudder when I look back at my first blogging efforts and how naive, ill-informed and poorly run they were. I have a long way to go when it comes to learning about the web, blogs, design, writing etc - but over time my own skills and knowledge in these areas have grown. You can read all the books, blogs and articles you want on blogging (and I’d encourage you to do so) - but so much of what you can learn about blogging for money has to come from on the job experience - which again only comes with time.

7. Time Invested: Lastly I’ll add that the time a blogger is willing and able to invest into their blog is a factor worth considering. I’m fortunate enough to have been able to work myself into a position where I can blog full time. This didn’t just happen overnight (I attempted to describe the process here) but as I was able to put more time into it the rewards increased. This is a bit of a catch 22 situation of course (the more you earn the more time you can put in and the more time you put in the more you can earn) but it’s a principle I’ve discovered that is worth adding into the mix.

So How Much Can a Blog Earn?

I’ve been avoiding the question for over 2000 words now and I’m not about to put a definitive answer on it except to say that every blog is different and the evidence that I’ve seen from interacting with thousands of bloggers and their blogs over the past year is that bloggers are earning anything between nothing at all and millions of dollars. The upper end of the spectrum is of course rare and those earning very little are in the majority, but bloggers earning decent income is becoming increasingly common. Here’s a couple of recent ProBlogger polls that might illustrate how the spectrum is spread in their earnings of AdSense and Chitika.

I’ll finish with this:

Probably the best way to find out what you can earn from a particular blog is to start that blog and test the waters.

Give yourself a time limit of a few months to get a feel for the topic and see how it goes. While it’s important to realize that a few months is not really enough - it is enough to get an understanding for whether it’s a topic you feel you can sustain, what the click values and CTR might be in contextual ads and even to get a feel for what type of readers you’ll attract. If the signs are good - invest more time into it - if they are not, consider trying something else.

That’s my 2 (or 2000) cents worth on the topic of how much blogs can earn. What’s yours?

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A couple of days ago I read a post on copyblogger that is authored by Brian who is also behind teaching sells that talks about creating membership sites thats really do works. inspite of the challenging aspects of his demanding schedule I just dont know how he gets enough time to add such valuable content to his blog consistently !!
In this post he talks about how headlines that sound unreal can ave a negative impact on your traffic. How many times have we read headings like “how to get 10000 subscibers in a single day” or “how to make million dollars in a week automated”or something similar that is obviously almost impossible (considering there are exceptions everywhere :wink: )





So the point is that in our effort to atttract more visitors to out blog and write something that compels the readers to click on our link we sometimes overdo things and makes all the difference. A lot of visitors will simply frown upon such content and never visit your blog. The only readers that will visit your blog actually will be those who are unaware of the truth behind such claims and are quite new in their search for the ultimate guide to doing this until they reallise that its now a child’s play and everyone has to do it the hard way which takes time and effort and most important patience. Yes, one thing I have learnt from bogging that made a difference in my life is patience and I am proud to be a blogger.

Coming back to the point even if you are able to pull in traffic they will soon realise the truth behind all those false claims and will never ever come back to your blog even if you are actually right in your claims in your very next post. Now dont start thinking that there are so many people on the surface of earth and it really dosent matter if we lose some of it. Traffic once lost is lost forever and it works like grapewine. Similarly when you write good content and fulfill your promises it is appreciated and people talk about it in the blogosphere, in forums, social sites and through their own blogs.

Instead of making false claims try to be more realistic in your approach and only claim what you can achieve.

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1. Article writing and press releases

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There are two ways of making money blogging, one more profitable than the other. First of all, small business owners find a great advantage in the use of blogs that provide rich informational content and the opportunity for great marketing promotions. But let's take a look at how you can turn blogging into a profitable activity. There are two possibilities: you either get paid for allowing other business owners to advertise on your site or you can include the blog in one of the many affiliate programs that enjoy such a popularity on the Internet nowadays.

In case you choose to exploit the advertising potential of your blog, the best program to work with is Google Adsense; you'll get paid every time an ad on your site gets clicked, regardless of whether this action converts into profit or not. The logical question that may rise here is: how can you get more clicks for the ads on the blog? Don't think about clicking your own ads to make some more money; fraud clicks are a very hot subject in the business, and Google teams are very efficient at identifying them. Such dishonest practice could cost you dearly if you dare to use it.

You can increase the profitability of the ads on your blog by taking advertising into consideration when you design the site. For instance, the fonts and colors used for the ads should be only slightly different from the rest of the page, without standing out. Why? Because the more visible you make them, the more likely it is that they'll annoy the user, and the entire purpose of your blog is to get people to spend quality time on the page. Adsense is a program that displays only those ads that are related to the domain the blog tackles with, so that you cannot complain about too large a number of irrelevant visitors.





Last, but not least, you can use the blog as part of an affiliate program, which involves promoting the products or services of a specific business. For instance if you've got a blog dealing with diving, you can very well turn into an affiliate for a company that sells diving equipment. The amount of money you are supposed to get is usually part of the individual agreement you sign with the other party, and it usually depends on how well you manage to use the blog to actually convince people to purchase one of the products. Friendly links, special discounts, promotions and e-news letters are all part of an affiliate campaign that could turn a simple blog into a great revenue generator.

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Many webmasters get themselves stuck at CTR of 1-2%.This CTR is not bad at all unless you have very strong traffic.But if don't get much traffic, this CTR is not sufficient.Increase in CTR will surely increase your earnings.
Here are few tips to increase your CTR:

1.Placement of Ads:It is most important point to be considered when we talk about CTR.Google has statistically found that the Ad placements at the top of your page return best results.

The visitor will come across your Ads easily if they are placed very near to the main content of your page.





The dark spots mentioned have been found to very good results.It represents the part of your blog/website just above the posts/main content.Try to use a 468x60 banner there.

The blocks in orange also have good returns associated with them.It mainly include the large banners either at top or bottom of your page.

Using other placements is not really very helpful.The visitor will be able to differentiate between Ads and contents.

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Adbrite has been the choice of many publishers after they get banned from Google Adsense.
Let us learn more about Adbrite.Adbrite works on the principle of selling the adspace on your website.Adbrite has its site directory where all the publishers submit their sites.When any advertiser is interested to advertise on your website, he will just contact Adbrite team and start advertising.When a visitor clicks on his Ads, you get revenue.

Why to go for Adbrite?

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Because of the way blogs are structures and how they work, sometimes, it can be said that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for blogs is one step further than websites. While most of these techniques eventually also require a some tweaking, blogs need to be tweaked from a systems perspective - one single change to the blog template will affect all the individual posts.

Here are four points you will want to implement on your WordPress blog, to get it better optimized for search engines.

1. Change your permalink structure

The WordPress default installation has a permalink URL that goes something like http://www.myblog.com/?p=123. While Google does let pagerank flow into single parameter URLs like this, a more optimized permalink URL would go by the structure of http://www.myblog.com/category-name/post-name/
The reason for this is because if you are writing for SEO, you would most probably have keywords in your post title, and WordPress uses the post title to generate the post slug. Using this permalink format would result in the permalink URL with keywords embedded within.

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There are several relatively easy ways to make some money from your blog such as using Google AdSense, selling private ad spots, and writing reviews. The downside with using Google AdSense and trying to sell private ad spots is your blog must have enough traffic to generate the clicks or page impressions. My guess is most of you aren’t getting hundreds of visitors to your blog each day (not yet at least) so you aren’t making much money from those methods of advertising.

So where does that leave us? If you haven’t heard of writing reviews on your blog to generate a decent stream of income then you might want to check it out.
How does writing reviews make me money?

It’s actually easier than you think. The first step is to sign up with a blog review network and submit your blog. Some of these companies have rules in place like the age of your blog (at least 6 months old, etc), where it’s hosted (blogspot, wordpress, etc), and page rank. They try to weed out spam blog sites which are usually not very old or of good quality. Make sure you read the fine print before you spend your time applying only to find out you don’t qualify.

Assuming your blog is approved, you can now browse the review marketplace looking for reviews to write about or another option is to wait for someone to approach you. I recommend you be the aggressor and sift through the marketplace so you can start making money asap.

Once you find a review you’d like to write about and meet the criteria to qualify, just take it and begin. You’ll create your blog post and follow the requirements of the reviewer, then submit it for approval. After it’s approved, you get paid. Pretty easy huh?





What blog review networks do you recommend?

There are several companies out there who pay you to write reviews on your blog but only two of them are worth talking about in my opinion. They are Sponsored Reviews and Pay Per Post.

Sponsored Reviews is great because they allow you to search for advertisers directly and bid on jobs. Their bidding system allows you to negotiate rates with advertisers in order to maximize your earnings. They also provide the largest payout of all review networks by only taking a 35% commission for their services. That means you can earn anything from $10 to 500+ for each review. Their user interface is one of the better ones out there and the only drawback to their service is the lack of advertisers. I’m sure it will continue to grow it’s advertising base so they are at least worth a look.

One other perk is their affiliate program. Earn up to $175 per Advertiser and $90 Per Blogger referred. Payouts are based on money spent by the advertiser and money earned by the blogger. See the chart below for payouts. Their average advertiser spends several hundred dollars so most referrals will be worth at least $25 (according to their website).

You’ll then want to put one of their ads on your site or a text link to start taking advantage of their referral bonuses. Can’t hurt to get an ad on your blog right? Get started with Sponsored Reviews now.

Next up we have PayPerPost which is another great pay for review site. They offer the largest sponsored blogging network with the greatest amount of offers along with a forum where bloggers can post questions, etc. They also pay you a $20 bonus after you complete your first review post. The review post is easy…you just need to write about PayPerPost and they give you $20. Pretty quick way to make a quick $20.

One bad thing I noticed while browsing their marketplace is the restrictions on a few of the reviews. For example, you couldn’t write a review and post it on blogspot.com, wordpress.com, or myspace.com and you must be located in North America, Asia, or Europe only. That doesn’t mean if you have a blogger blog or wordpress blog using your own domain or hosted on your own site you can’t write a review. All I’m saying is make sure you read the review details carefully so you don’t waste your time writing a post only to discover you won’t get credit for it.

They also have a scoring system which might be a barrier to you on some post reviews. It’s usually the higher payouts that are looking for nice reviews from established high ranking sites. They utilize Google Page Rank and Amazon’s Alexa rankings to factor in what your site’s “score” will be.





PayPerPost also offers a referral affiliate program with some pretty nice payouts as well. You will get paid $15 for each referral once the referees first blog posting is reviewed, approved and then finally accepted 30 days later. This means they need to go all the way through the process in order for it to be a legit referral. Again, not a bad payout for just putting a banner or link on your blog. It’s cool because you can see which referrals you currently have signed up and the total amount you potentially could earn (assuming they convert all the way mentioned above).

Summary

If I were you, I’d sign up for both Sponsored Reviews and PayPerPost and see which one works best for you. There is no rule preventing you from having two accounts and writing reviews from both sites and you can promote whichever you choose. That’s what I did and it also gives you a bigger selection of available reviews to write. After you sign up, make sure you get some affiliate banners on your blog so you have another avenue to make money. Just imagine if you write a dozen or so reviews a month and get a couple referrals. You could easily earn a few hundred extra bucks a month for some pretty minimal work!

I wish these sort of sites were available when I was in college because I had tons of free time and needed to make money. I could have easily earned $500+ a month writing a couple reviews a day!

If you are interested in Sponsored review please click the below button

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Building quality traffic to your website can be difficult and it won’t happen overnight. There are no quick way to building trafficand the ones that guarantee high volumes of traffic quickly, normally means that that traffic is of poor quality. If you are a business and sell products on your website you only want quality traffic that will convert into sales.

Use social bookmarking websites to send you traffic to your website and get your websites name out there.

Use only quality directories to drive visitors to your website there are many good web directories out there that can bring you quality traffic.

Embark on a Pay Per Click campaign Google AdWords is the best known and is the best at bringing you traffic that will convert into customers. However there are many other services available so check them all out to see what can work for you.

Don’t forget offline marketing as visitors who visit your website from an offline source can convert very well.

Email marketing is an excellent way to keep in touch with your customers and can be a great way to sell to clients who have already bought from you. These visitors are valuable as if some has bought from you before they are more likely to buy from you again.

Viral marketing on the web can be an excellent way to attract traffic to your website. Just try thinking outside the box.

Now this one is important having quality compelling content on your website because if you don’t have this then your visitors won’t stick around.

RSS feeds are an excellent way to keep people up to date on what’s happening on your website as people can be notified for example as soon as new products have been added to your website.

Embark on an SEO campaign search engine optimisation is the most cost effective way to promote your website.

Google analytics, you need some way to track what your visitors are doing on your website and how successful your traffic building efforts are.

As you can see there are many ways to build traffic to your website but remember your website should always be in testing mode. Try testing different content and layout to increase your conversion goals. As converting your traffic is the ultimate goal of your website.

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This is a simple guide to show you how to make money with Google Ad Sense. If you already have a webpage or blog
and aren’t using Google Ad Sense, you could be missing out on some automatic earnings everyday. Google AdSense basically puts ads on your website that are related to your website content. You get paid when someone clicks an ad.

For example: I have a website that I sell dog t-shirts from: www.cafePress.com/fashionpug

Step1

If I want to make extra income from ads on my web-site, I sign up for Google AdSense. Google Adsense then gives me an HTML code that I enter on my dog t-shirt website. Now, ads begin to appear on my website that are related to my site’s content.

The example below shows some Google AdSense ads on my dog t-shirt website:

Step2

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The blogosphere is a big and busy world with over 100 million blogs and growing. How do you attract visitors to your blog? Follow these simple tips to drive traffic to your blog.

1. Write Well and Write Often
Frequently updating your blog with useful content is the first step to building your blog's audience. The content you write is what will keep readers coming back for more. Make sure you have something meaningful to say to them and say it often to maintain their interest and keep them loyal.

Furthermore, post frequently to increase the number of chances you have for your blog's content to be noticed by search engines such as Google or Technorati.

.2. Submit Your Blog to Search Engines
Get on the radar screen for the popular search engines such as Google and Yahoo! by submitting your blog's URL to them. Most search engines provide a 'Submit' link (or something similar) to notify the search engine of your new blog, so those search engines will crawl it and include your pages in their results.

It's important to understand that simply submitting your blog to search engines doesn't mean your pages will appear at the top of a Google search results screen, but at least your blog will be included and will have the chance of being picked up by a search engine.

.3. Use and Update Your Blogroll
By adding links to sites you like in your blogroll, the owners of those blogs will find your blog and will be likely to add a reciprocal link in their blogrolls. It's an easy way to get the link to your blog in front of many readers on other blogs. The hope is that some of those readers will click on the link to your blog on the other blogs' blogrolls and find your content interesting and enjoyable turning them into loyal readers.





.4. Harness the Power of Comments
Commenting is a simple and essential tool to increase your blog's traffic. First, respond to comments left on your blog to show your readers that you value their opinions and draw them into a two-way conversation. This will increase reader loyalty.

Second, leave comments on other blogs to drive new traffic. Make sure you leave your blog's URL in your comment, so you create a link back to your own blog. Many people will read the comments left on a blog post. If they read a particularly interesting comment, they are highly likely to click on the link to visit the commentor's website. It's important to make sure you leave meaningful comments that are likely to invite people to click on your link to read more.

.5. Syndicate Your Blog's Content with an RSS Feed
Setting up an RSS feed button on your blog makes it easy for your loyal readers to not just read your blog but also know when you publish new content.

.6. Use Links and Trackbacks
Links are one of the most powerful parts of your blog. Not only are links noticed by search engines, but they also act as a tap on the shoulder to other bloggers who can easily identify who is linking to their sites. Linking helps to get you noticed by other bloggers who are likely to investigate the sites that are linking to them. This may lead them to become new readers of your blog or to add links to your blog from theirs.

You can take links to other blogs a step further by leaving a trackback on the other blog to let them know you've linked to them. Blogs that allow trackbacks will include a link back to your blog in the comments section of the post that you originally linked to. People do click on trackback links!

.7. Tag Your Posts
It takes a few extra seconds to add tags to each of your blog posts, but it's worth the time in terms of the additional traffic tags can drive to your blog. Tags (like links) are easily noticed by search engines. They're also key to helping readers find your blog when they perform searches on popular blog search engines such as Technorati.

.8. Submit Your Posts to Social Bookmarking Sites
Taking the time to submit your best posts to social bookmarking sites such as Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit and more can be a simple way to quickly boost traffic to your blog.

.9. Remember Search Engine Optimization
When you write your blog posts and pages, remember to optimize your pages for search engines to find them. Include relevant keywords and links but don't overload your posts with too many relevant keywords or completely irrelevant keywords. Doing so can be considered spamming and could have negative results such as your blog being removed from Google's search entirely.





.10. Don't Forget Images
Images don't just make your blog look pretty, they also help people find you in search engine listings. People often use the image search options offered by Google, Yahoo! and other search engines, and naming your images with search engine optimization in mind can easily boost your traffic.
The blogosphere is a big and busy world with over 100 million blogs and growing. How do you attract visitors to your blog? Follow these simple tips to drive traffic to your blog.

11. Consider Guest Blogging
Guest blogging can be done when you write a guest post on another blogger's blog or when another blogger writes a guest post on your blog. Both methods are likely to increase traffic as your blog will be exposed to the other blogger's audience. Many of the other blogger's readers will visit your blog to see what you have to say.

12. Join Forums, Web Rings or Online Groups
Find online forums, web rings, groups or social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn where you can share ideas and ask questions of like-minded individuals. Add a link to your blog in your signature line or profile, so each time you post on a forum or participate in another online network, you're indirectly promoting your blog. Chances are many people will click on that link to learn more about you.

.13. Promote Outside Your Blog
Promoting your blog shouldn't stop when you step outside the blogosphere. Add your blog's URL to your email signature and business cards. Talk about it in offline conversations. It's important to get your name and your blog's URL noticed offline, too.

.14. Nominate Yourself and Other Blogs for Blog Awards
There are a number of blog awards given out throughout the year. Nominating yourself and other blogs and bloggers can draw attention to your blog and drive traffic to it.

.15. Don't Be Shy
The most important part of the blogosphere is its community and much of your success as a blogger will be tied to your willingness to network with that community. Don't be afraid to ask questions, join conversations or just say hi and introduce yourself. Don't sit back and hope the online world will find you. Speak out and get yourself noticed. Let the blogosphere know you've arrived and have something to say!

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