Blogging for Dollars - Make Money with your Internet Marketing Blog, Blogger Promotion, Advertising and Revenue Generating Tips
This page features ways to make money on the Internet with your blog, including blogger promotion, advertising and revenue generating resources. We will also feature specific ways affiliates can use blogs to create datafeeds and use blogs to capitalize on Google Adsense affiliate revenue.
For starters, here is a new blog called Performancing
(Scroll down to see some great tips about blogging from ProBlogger.net )
Today, we are glad to open up PerformancingAds to the public. PerformancingAds is an ad marketplace for the 125×125 format, which has slowly become the format of choice for bloggers.
Although there are many new features in the pipeline, and improvements are being made daily, we have been successfully running the network in private beta on dozens of high-volume blogs and websites for months and are glad to open it up for public use.
Here are 10 reasons we think bloggers should give PerformancingAds a try.
1. It’s open to all publishers
That’s right. We accept popular, well-established blogs as well upcoming blogs. If you have a blog or website and want to feature 125×125 ads on your site, you can join PerformancingAds. And the more your site grows, the more exposure it gets in the marketplace.
2. Create and book your own ads
In addition to selling ads, all blog publishers can book their own 125×125 ads. You can use PerformancingAds to promote affiliate offers on your site. Or maybe even promote flagship content like this:
3. Expose your site to more advertisers
We chose to have advertisers buy in 1 week increments for a reason. It lowers the thresold for advertiser entry, increasing the number of advertisers in the system, and ultimately making you more money.
4. Be part of the largest 125×125 marketplace on the Internet
We are quickly becoming the largest (and most diverse) network of publishers for the 125×125 ad format. Get exposure in the very first place that advertisers will go when looking to book 125×125 ads. Some of the great sites in our marketplace include Freelance Writing Gigs, Geeks are Sexy, Candy Addict and Business Pundit.
5. Free ad space through our publisher exchange program
All publishers in our ad network earn credits either by A) selling ads or B) showing other publisher ads in empty spots. Credits are then spent by getting free ad space on similar sites. It’s a win-win situation. Everyone gets more exposure.
6. Built by publishers for publishers
PerformancingAds was designed from the ground up by established publishers. We built it with you in mind.
7. An amazing affiliate program
Can you say recurring income? Did you know that the vast majority of affiliate programs on the net only pay you a flat fee. Each month you have to start over from scratch. With PerformancingAds affiliate program, you have the opportunity to build the ultimate source of passive income.
8. We are working for YOU
We have a professional ad sales team in place that is agressively pursuing ad partnerships for the sites in our network. Joining PerformancingAds is like getting your own direct ad sales team.
9. Get paid quickly
You get paid on the 1st of the month immediately following the advertisers’ purchase. No waiting for 30 or 60 days.
10. Make more money
It’s simple. You want to make more money. PerformancingAds gives you the chance to get the most exposure possible for your 125×125 ad space.
Get started with PerformancingAds today!
Liz Strauss, author of the Successful-Blog and one time contributor to Performancing.com will be hosting the equivalent of an auto show this weekend but for blogs. This is a great event if you are looking to meet new people while promoting your blog. The event will be held this weekend, July 26th-27th.
As Liz points out,
It’s FREE PROMOTION and visibility for your blog and your brand. It would be silly to pass it up.
Be sure to check out the details (blog-to-show-showcase-your-blog-at-successful-blog) on how to enter your blog into the showcase.
One of the most powerful yet under-the-radar marketing strategies in the metablogging community seems to be building an email list, or email marketing.
I did a quick poll with my friends and asked them two questions:
- Are you subscribed to an RSS feed?
- Are you subscribed to an email newsletter?
Most of them were subscribed to some kind of email list or newsletter - from one about fashion and beauty (my sister) to another about php tips (my friend who does programming as a hobby).
Yet most of them didn’t know what RSS was.
Many People Can Relate to Email
Based on this poll, most of you are not in a niche that’s social media or blogging savvy. This means that most of your readers have no clue about RSS.
Email, on the other hand, is widely used by the general public. People use email at work and to pass on viral content.
Also, in this post, Yaro says that email marketing works well for non-internet marketing topics because many people don’t use email marketing well in those niches.
Email Subscribers are High Quality Prospects
Yaro also says that email list subscribers are higher quality prospects than RSS subscribers.
I agree. People treat their email address as sacred. They don’t just give it to anyone for fear of being spammed.
I know that I’m a lot more picky with my email subscriptions than my RSS ones. I have 78 feeds on my RSS reader, but I’m only on a handful of email lists.
Also, most people check their email regularly because they don’t want to miss an important message from a friend or from work. However, RSS subscriptions can be ignored because you can always go back and read the blog posts later. Checking email is the more important activity for the vast majority of internet users.
Email Marketing Increases Your Repeat Visitors
If most of your target audience does not know what RSS is, you can’t rely on it to increase repeat visitors quickly.
However, with an email list, you can point your email subscribers back to your blog.
Email Marketing Gives You Another Income Stream
With an email list, you have another avenue for monetization. You can sell ads, add affiliate links, or link to your own product if you have one.
Email Marketing Allows You to Reuse Old Content
Yaro makes another good point for email marketing. He writes:
Email marketing, at least in some forms, is linear, has a narrower topic focus and allows you to reuse content over and over again as each new subscriber moves through your sequence in order, starting from the beginning. As a result of this structure and refined purpose, email marketing requires less content than blogging, yet is a better conversion tool for selling.
Can you image if every blog reader you have started from the beginning of your blog - your first blog post - and then moved through each post since then consecutively? This is what email marketing is like, but that’s okay because of the nature of and the purpose behind the list.
Should You Get Rid of RSS?
RSS versus email list doesn’t have to be an “either or” proposition. You should use both tactics. While email is widely used, RSS is getting more and more recognized as an efficient way to process information from blogs.
Also, RSS and email lists appeal to different members in your target audience. By using both, you’ll reach more people.
Feedback
I don’t have a lot of visitors on my main blog, but as it grows, I’ll be getting an AWeber account so I can start building my own email list. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Have you tried building an email list? If you have, what has been your experience with the process?
Ever have one of those days where you just don’t know what to write about? Thanks to a service called Skribit, that should no longer be an issue. Skribit allows for two way interaction between the blogger and the reader, allowing both to play a role in terms of which topics are written about.
Signing Up:
Signing up to the service is simple as well as free. In fact, Skribit is one of those services which allows you to sign up via your OpenID account. Once you signup, you’ll be taken to a page where you can add your blog name as well as the blog url. There is also a configurable option to allow anonymous suggestions. Anonymous suggestions simply means that those who do not have an account with Skribit will be able to suggest writing topics.
The next step is to configure your widget. This widget is what will provide the two way interaction. If you prefer not to use the widget, you can use either the badge presentation or a simple link. However, I highly suggest using the widget as it allows the interaction to take place right from your blog instead of having to browse to your specific Skribit page. The Widget supports integration with Blogger, TypePad and Self-Hosted WordPress blogs. Because of the limitations imposed on WordPress.com, this widget will not work their. However, WP.com bloggers can use the badge or link embed methods instead. For all other websites or publishing platforms Skribit provides a chunk of embeddable HTML code you can use to place the service on your site. Once you add the widget, badge, or embeddable code to your blog, you’ll want to click the verify button to let Skribit know that you have administration access to the site.
Adding Suggestions:
Once Skribit detects that the widget has been published on your blog, you’ll now have the ability to add suggestions in which your readers can vote upon. In order to add suggestions, you must click on the WHAT SHOULD I WRITE ABOUT LINK in the header section of the widget. This will activate a text area where you’ll have 100 characters in which to provide a suggestion. Once you click on the submission button, your suggestion will automatically appear in the list of topics to write about. Readers can then vote on these topics to give you a better feel for which ones are in higher demand.
The back end of Skribit provides an interface where you can view submitted suggestions, delete suggestions, edit the suggestion and link to the post. If you decide to write an article based on a user submitted topic, be sure to click on the Link button as this will notify the suggestion author that a post has been published on that topic.
The Skribit site itself is interesting in that, the front page displays the most popular topics in terms of votes, recently suggested topics and the most recently blogged topics. The recent topics area of the site functions like the Twitter timeline. Whenever a topic is suggested on your blog through the widget, it will show up on this page where members of the Skribit community can leave comments. You can’t vote on suggestions from the actual site. Instead, you need to visit the blog where the widget is located and cast your votes their.
Conclusion:
I’m amazed that I didn’t come across this service sooner. It provides another two way communication link between bloggers and their readers. Instead of the usual contact form or comment form to where readers would let blog authors know what they wanted them to write about, now you have a service which bridges this particular gap in communication. On top of that, you have the community that has been built around Skribit which can serve as topic inspiration. Using a service like this should eliminate writer’s block from happening ever again.
Your Thoughts:
If you are a Skribit user, please share your experience with the service with us. Has it helped you in your writing in terms of coming up with things to talk about? Has the service bridged the gap between yourself and your readers? Perhaps you don’t use Skribit but use a similar service? If so let us know about it.
Yesterday I wrote about the ROI of some content creation activities. Make sure to check out the comment section on that post for a discussion on how to measure blogging ROI.
Today I’ll go over some marketing activities.
Blog commenting (medium ROI)
Blog commenting is the bread and butter marketing method for many bloggers. Your ROI goes up if you’re one of the first commenters and you comment on a popular blog. Also, blogs without the nofollow tag increase your ROI.
It works well because you get traffic to your site and you also get on a blogger’s radar. If you comment enough, they may check out your site and comment back or even give you a link. Just remember to add value in your comments instead of only writing, “Great post. Thanks!”
However, don’t expect too much from blog commenting unless you do it consistently for a long period of time. Many bloggers use this method so your ROI is diminished because of the competition.
Social voting marketing (low to high)
Marketing on social voting sites like Digg and StumbleUpon is either a hit or miss for many bloggers. Here are a couple questions you need to ask before spending a lot of time on these sites.
Does your target audience hang out at the social voting site you’re using?
If not, it’s probably not worth it to use the social voting site. I have a blog that targets the collectible card game, Magic the Gathering. This game is pretty popular worldwide. However, most of the players don’t know about social voting sites. Therefore, it would not make sense for me to try to market the blog on a social voting site.
Do you have a large enough network to get enough votes so your content will go popular or viral?
Social voting works if you’re willing to commit to the site for a couple of months. This allows you to build a good reputation. That reputation will lead to friends on the site that can vote for your content.
Until you get to that point, unless your content is exceptional, you won’t get much traffic.
Is your monetization model based on page views or conversions?
Unless your monetization model is based on page views, the traffic from social voting sites may not be worth it for the work you have to put in. Social voting traffic is usually lower quality than other types of traffic like search or link referrals. The users from social voting sites have a high bounce rate and don’t usually come back to visit your site. This is a problem for blogs looking to sell stuff or build an email list.
Social voting users are looking for cool, useful, or entertaining stuff. They are not really looking to purchase anything or sign up for an offer.
Here are two links to check out especially if your monetizaton model is based on product or affiliate sales.
Do you have viral content?
To get the most out of social voting sites, you need to create viral content - content that people will naturally vote on and pass along to their friends.
Asking webmasters directly for links (high)
The reason this method is a high ROI activity is because many bloggers don’t contact webmasters directly. I occasionally do freelance SEO for an internet marketing firm. My client has great content, but so do our competitors. However, our competitors don’t get the links we’re getting. I’m pretty sure it’s because we email webmasters and ask for links while our competitors don’t.
As long as your have linkworthy content, you should definitely do this activity. If you’re not sure how to word your email messages, check out this sample email template.
Also, links from quality sites are the main currency on the web. If you have links, you’ll get direct traffic from the link and indirectly your links will increase your search traffic.
Forum marketing (low to medium)
If your monetization model is purely based on traffic volume, then I would stay away from forums. They just don’t drive enough traffic.
However, if your model is based on conversions, then forum marketing is worth it because forum traffic is high quality traffic. Forum users are invested in your niche. They are willing to join a forum and converse with other niche fans. These users are much more likely to convert to a sale, lead, or email list.
To make forum marketing work, choose a popular, active forum in your niche that allows links on your forum signature.
Your Turn
What marketing activities occupy your blogging workflow?
Splicd is a cool new WebApp developed by a member of Performancing Hive that allows you to isolate the interesting parts from a YouTube video and provides you with a link to share it with your family, friends, and colleagues.
Instead of making readers sit through the boring parts, bloggers can directly link to the section of a video they are talking about.
Here I’m highlighting the funniest clip from a funny cat montage.
Or consider how golden-shellback.com recently had a product reviewed on tekzilla. At first golden-shellback.com had an embed to the whole episode. Recently, they’ve gone in and edited the video to only show their review. Instead of timely video editing, they could have easily used splicd.
Features of Splicd
- Splice the end or beginning off of youtube videos
- Planned support for other services such as break, veoh, metacafe, and liveleak.
- Simple to use. Originally designed for low-tech users.
Lorelle Van Fossen at the BlogHerald has published a post discussing how to prepare yourself for the blog bullies. Her article strikes close to home with me because at one point, I had to deal with a blog bully myself. Here’s what happened.
My Experience
Back when I was producing my weekly podcast called WordPress Weekly, I performed a live one hour interview with an individual known as Small Potato. Small Potato was an individual who had made quite an impact within the WordPress community, specifically to those who were involved with creating themes. The interview didn’t go as well as I thought it would. I had prepared 10 or so questions that I thought would get me through the interview and as we discussed those questions, more questions would be brought up and the interview would be more like a conversation. Unfortunately, the conversation part was missing as I received very short answers to my questions, sometimes with a simple Yes or No answer. By the time I reached the thirty minute mark of the show, I was out of questions and didn’t know what to do. Thankfully, a few listeners called in and spoke with SP which ended up saving the show.
I knew the interview didn’t go as well as I had liked but one blogger decided to publish a post discussing the interview. The title of the post was “Jeffro 2.0 Gives Worst Interview Ever“. As I read the title of the post, anger and emotions took over. I read through his article along with his opinions. By the time I reached the end of the post, I wanted to reach through my monitor and punch this guy in the face and tell him to conduct the interview himself.
Instead of telling this guy off on his own blog, I took a couple of deep breaths and then left a detailed, heart felt comment, thanking him for his review along with his opinions. I let him know how I felt about the interview as well as agreeing with some of the things he had said. After I took a few more deep breaths, I decided to publish a post on my blog asking my audience if they felt the same way as this guy did about the interview. I was blown away by the reaction of my audience.
I received a large number of compliments on my blog for the interview along with a number of comments which gave me suggestions on how to make future interviews better. Most didn’t agree that the interview was the worst one ever and that in fact, his review almost contradicted his headline. I didn’t ask for any support from my listeners, but a number of them browsed to where the review was published and gave the guy an ear full.
What I Learned
After the ordeal was over with, it became an event I could look back on and laugh at. I learned an important lesson that at times, is harder to accomplish than to preach. This lesson was to take the high road whenever possible, no matter what the circumstances are. Taking the high road and putting yourself above those who enjoy the bottom of the barrel will not only help to provide you with more leverage, but it will also gain you admiration, respect, and authority. Anything less is just adding fuel to the fire.
It’s 2008 And The Web Is Different
Although I believe blog bullies or internet bullies in general are still plentiful, with the advent of social networking, personal brands, blogging, reputation etc, all on the line, I don’t see this large rampage of internet trolls taking over the internet. With sites and services built specifically to monitor and track a user’s reputation across the web, there is more at stake now than ever before. When you consider many employers are using Google searches, MySpace lookups etc, as part of their background checks for employees, it’s best to make sure that before you hit that publish button, whether it be for a blog post, comment, image, or a video, that your paper trail on the web does not prevent you from future opportunities.
Tell Us Your Story
Have you gone through a blog bullying experience yet? What about comment trolls? Let us know about your experience and tell us how you dealt with your situation in the comments. Stories along with your resolutions will have a chance at being featured in a future post here at Performancing.
Image taken by Eddie~s Under Creative Commons 2.0
WordPress, creators of one of the most popular publishing platforms, has released an iPhone application that allows users to post content onto WordPress blogs by way of the iPhone. It is available on the 3G iPhone, first-generation iPhone, and iPod Touch. It is also free, and we all like free stuff. This really marks another forward step in mobile blogging technology.
WordPress.com and self-installed WordPress 2.5.1 or higher can take advantage of the WordPress iPhone application. You can embed pictures and do many other popular functions that is available on the web-based interface. Early reviews seem to give praise to the application, but one of WordPress’s main competitors, TypePad (by the folks who brought you MovableType—Six Apart), has also created an iPhone application, which has been highly praised as well.
It would be very interesting to see how many people actually take advantage of the WordPress iPhone application. Perhaps WordPress will reveal some numbers in the future.
I still have a few questions: can anyone accurately type on the iPhone’s keyboard, and will this be used for anything other than short blurbs on WordPress blogs?
There is a great FAQ available on the official site, but I guess you’ll just have to try it for yourself.
I, unfortunately, cannot comment heavily on this, but if any of you have an iPhone, let us know if the WordPress iPhone application is any good.
The term ROI (return on investment) is from the finance world. Basically, it calculates how much return you get on your monetary investment.
Other niches like business management took the term and applied it to time. I’ve applied the term to blogging activities. How well are you using the time invested for your blog? Is your blogging workflow conducive to bringing you a high return or a low return?
I’ve separated blogging activities in two categories: content creation and marketing.
Monetization is another vital category, but I think you don’t need to spend as much time on monetizaton as content creation or marketing. This is especially true for new blogs. New blogs need traffic before they can focus on monetization. And Content creation and marketing are the necessary activities to drive traffic to your site. Some bloggers have gone as far as saying not to monetize a site unless you have 1000 daily visitors.
Anyways, back to content creation and marketing. You definitely want high ROI activities in both categories. If you ignore content creation or marketing, you blog will be unbalanced. Marketing helps you get new visitors while content creation helps you get return visitors.
Let’s look at a couple content creation activities. Tomorrow I’ll deal with marketing activities.
Blog posts (medium ROI)
These are the 200-400 word posts that are a dime a dozen on the blogosphere. Every new blogger starts off writing these type of posts.
The reason they have a medium ROI is because they don’t really differentiate your blog from other blogs. Still, if you consistent create these posts for at least a year and add good marketing, you’ll slowly build a following and improve your branding. These posts are like the pawns on a chess board - not very powerful but with a good number of them, they provide a stable blogging foundation.
Linkbait (high)
Linkbait is usually content that takes you a much longer to create than the average blog post. It’s a product of researching your niche well. It contains other elements instead of just text like images and video. Occasionally, it’s a useful or entertaining web application.
Linkbait is a high ROI activity because it sets your blog post apart from the crowd. Most blogs in your niche are probably not doing any linkbait, so you’ll capture a lot more attention from your linkbait than your normal blog posts. Also, linkbait is much more likely to attract links, which then increase your search traffic.
To learn more about linkbait, check out these posts:
Guest posts (medium)
This activity could also go under marketing. However, I put it under content creation because most of your time in this activity is spent writing.
Your ROI goes up if you find a popular blog to guest post on.
The reason I don’t think it’s a high ROI activity is because you only get one link and you’re spend time creating content for another site instead of your own. Compare this to linkbait, which can get you multiple links from different sites and the content is published on your site.
Article submissions (low to medium)
Your ROI depends on how well you can find a low competition keyword that still has a good amount of search volume. If your niche is very competitive, it may be hard to find those type of keywords.
In my experience, these three article submission sites have done a good job sending traffic:
The advantage of this activity over guest posts is that article submission sites accept all quality articles. With guest posting, you have to spend time looking for a quality site willing to publish your article.
Your Turn
What content creation activities occupy your blogging workflow?
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