Lee Odden says,

“With so many blogs being created every day, it’s a mystery to many bloggers how to make their blog stand out. There are many types of blogs or purposes for blogs and a certain number of tactics are applicable to just about all of them”. ProBlogger also stated, “It breaks my heart to see blogs with great content languish in utter anonymity, devoid of comments, saddled with a seven-figure Alexa traffic ranking, and rotting in page rank purgatory”

Tony Hung followed it up with a brilliant post on tips to market a blog. I agree with both of them. Success of a blog largely depends on the kind of promotions you do along with the content you publish. It is difficult to sustain a good amount of traffic on your blog without spreading the word in the initial stages. A lot of bloggers around the world feel that just writing good content on their blog would draw visitors, but in verity it does not happen for most of the time. A passive blogger thus loses out hope when he does not get results in terms of returning traffic on his blog.

That justifies the need of a number of platforms available for a blogger to promote his online estate. A blogger must keep playing with these platforms to find out where lies the best target audience for his blog. A blog is more of a brand than a website and a blogger must promote himself and his blog as a brand. For this the role of social media communities and social media branding comes into the scene – as a platform.

Plethora of social networking tools such as Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon, etc. help a blogger reach his audience. Facebook is one great way to share your content and market your blog. There have been a number of articles written on the web about how to use Twitter and StumbleUpon to promote one’s blog. It is also important for a blogger to go to other blogs in the niche which he operates and leave comments which would add value to the readers. These valuable comments often lead to trackback of the author to a blog and thus can be used to generate direct traffic.

Another very useful way to promote your blog is by adding links to the signature of an email you send. This generates curiosity in the receiver of the email and helps some direct traffic onto the blog. One important thing to keep in mind while writing a post is choosing a compelling title. A lot visitors move on to read a post if they find an interesting title.

Other things that have caught up tremendous interest of bloggers all over the world are the formation of physical blogger communities. Blogger Community Events such as Blog Camp, un-conferences like Bar Camp, tweetups, etc. are organized in almost all parts of the world and have become a revelation for bloggers to be a part of and promote their blog business.

All things said and done, there is a saying in marketing which goes as,

“Your product will only sell if it is good. If it is bad and not liked by the customer, no matter how much you promote, you will not sell”.

Therefore, never lose focus on the content of your blog as it comes much before spreading of the word happens.

Image credits: toprankonlinemarketing

Partnerships actually help bloggers to enhance their productivity and reduce the workload. It leads to generation of better ideas and time for a better execution. This pretty much goes with the famous saying -

“Two people can accomplish more than twice as much as one; they get a better return for their labor.”

Partnerships are actually helpful as it brings people from diverse backgrounds together to work on one idea, which is in coherence with the theme/niche of the blog. Though partnerships are lucrative, they can be precarious too. There is a lot of ambiguity and apprehensions when it comes to choosing a blogging partner. Few of them include;

• Potential of a blogger – A partner must have skills and knowledge suitable to be in partnership. He must fill the gap which others may not be able to close, thereby becoming an essential asset for the partnership.
• Consistency – A blogging partner must be consistent in terms of performance and delivery for the partnership to be fruitful.
• Time – A blogger must be able to devote sufficient time for a smooth partnership so as to deliver the best performance.
• Reviews from references – Reviews from those who know the prospective partner blogger is also crucial for his/her believability. Also, the past experiences with the prospect may help judging the partner on desired parameters.

Few examples of successful partnerships

The best partnerships that Problogger Darren Rowse had has been fruitful to him in many ways. Another major partnership that involved Darren Rowse was when he collaborated with Chris Garret. Partnering Profits was one of the most successful initiatives that happened between Darren, Chris, CopyBlogger’s Brian Clark and Jon Morrow. The 449 is another such venture which is a partnership effort and has been a highly successful one. Not only does product or service launches are built up in a partnership, but there have been instances about advises and suggestions, coming together for a program, etc. between the greats which have been of high value to the readers. Unique Blog Designs also partnered with Yaro Starak, Shoe Money and others to reach the masses.

Campaigning

Another dimension to blogging is campaigning for the blog. Promoting a blog has varies ways attached to it. To allure the best, a blog must ensure great visibility to your target market and appeal the advertisers. There are several conventional ways to blog marketing like Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and marketing on social sites.

To break through the clutter, bloggers may use unconventional means like podcasts, webcasts, etc. They are effective mediums to lure the visitors of blog. These tools can be informative and entertaining. These are extensively used in corporate blogging for disseminating information.

The factors that are crucial for successful blog campaigns lie in following two major considerations;

• Relationship with Bloggers: A blogger must have friendly terms with other bloggers as they can help in promoting your blog, thereby enhancing its visibility. They can recommend your blog on their web-pages and provide great help again. Blog recommendation bear credibility as people perceive these as neutral media and are more likely to believe it.
• Consistency with the theme: Every blogger must keep in mind that he should not digress from the theme of the blog. If it is a corporate blog, it should be information-intensive. For a general blog, it should be in sync with its name and purpose.

Start small but emphasize on minute details which is the foundation of development of a fiduciary relationship amongst the partners, thus converting the idea into money making venture.

Image credits: Cquaries

The biggest of all is Google’s very own – Adsense. For the uninitiated, Google Adsense is an advertising program by Google than can be run on your site or blog to enable text, picture and video ads. The Adsense program is one of the most recognizable and widely implemented online monetization tool by bloggers across the globe. It is one of the highest revenue generation program for most bloggers. The ads which get displayed on your site are more often than not contextual.

One of the main reasons of Google Adsense program being widely used than others is the ease of use and the Google brand. The ads are closely matched in context with the post, geographical location, and other parameters, etc. There are different ways to use Adsense effectively. Be it feeds, search, domain names and mobile content – Google has it for all!

Surprisingly, most people think that Adsense is the only program that is present on the web to help them monetize your blog. However, there are a plethora of other programs that people have successfully made money with. We shall talk about a few of them;

1. Clicksor – It helps in driving customers with graphical banners, text ads, interstitial ads and pop-up ads. It is different from other programs because it majorly focuses on concentrating on converting visitors to your site into consumers via their product Content Marketing Technology. This helps the user in increasing the ROI quickly and effectively than others.
2. TargetPoint – They claim to be technology leaders by providing the most relevant of ads. It is one of the most cost effective pay-per-search based program. The company only works with a limited numeral of direct advertisers. Their services are mostly publisher oriented in which the publisher will have control command over the ads form, regulation over ad content, entire statistics on your performance and enhanced bottom-line revenue.
3. Adbrite – It is tipped as the 2^nd best advertising program after Adsense. The ads fit the content of your site and have their base of advertisers which are biggies such as Live Nation, GM, AT&T and Verizon. As they are the 2^nd best, their ads run on more than 1 billion pages and provide opportunities to scale up.
4. BidClix – They claim to be one of the fastest growing ad programs on the web. Wiki says BidClix was the first online advertising network to create a “self serve” system that allowed advertisers to create and manage their advertising campaigns and allowed publishers to manage their online advertising inventory through a web-based interface. This probably is their USP.
5. Chitika – It is one of the largest search targeted advertising networks serving over 30 thousand websites and is a proven place for online buyers and consumers. Chitika originates its meaning from the South Indian language Telugu meaning “in a snap”. They offer their services based on user’s ‘intent driven’ search activity and also tenders to search marketing which is beyond Google and Yahoo. Their success is authenticated by reviews that its users have written.
6. AllFeeds – They implement a proprietary infrastructure technology that pulls and pushes results to and from numerous search engines at the same time. As a result of this technology, advertisers and affiliates earn more than other programs and for the users, the site experience is enhanced. This also helps provide sponsored listings and value added service in your site.
7. Veoda – Veoda’s search engine returns accurate results in a colorful format while providing an enriched internet experience. Their USP is that they offer add-on services such as raising up money for a non profit organization. Veoda includes step by step wizards for creating search boxes, flash listings, static listings, pop-ups and fly in ads.
8. RevenuePilot – They offer one of the most innovative, efficient and effective means to monetize the traffic on a site and generate revenue out of it. The details of the use of RevenenuePIlot describe its operation. This program allows the user to specify the keywords that one wishes to advertise or link to and thus help in achieving greater targeting.
9. Kanoodle – They offer one of the brightest ads on the web and are affiliated with thousands of search engines across the world. However, the opinions in forums don’t appear that the consumers have been happy using this particular service.
10. Quigo – It is one of the cheaper programs that users can select and their ad placements are based on brand, page or section, geographical location and topic. They offer automated contextual ad serving systems for online publishers, portals, PPC engines and shopping sites. They have some of the biggest of names as their clients.

There are several more options to work it out, but to top it all, it’s the content that shall be the king.

Image credits: EC

Making money online is still a dream for a lot of internet sapiens, most of them are not even close to the correct way of doing things. We at ProfitBlogger laid out an interesting programme, featuring several suggestions and advices about the probable ways to earn money through affiliate marketing programs.

The art of making building relationships

The reasons why WordPress empowers a huge potential to become a money minting machine if used effectively are in plenty. The presence of numerous plugins allow almost anything one can think of while playing with a blog layout, configuration, features, etc. Effective use of plugins have resulted in some of the best CMS based on WordPress. It is pretty much evident that world’s top blogs mostly run on WordPress.

The other advantage that WordPress users have is the flexibility in design as compared to other platforms. As, BlogForProfit writes,

Instead of having to settle for a web yellow page, where you throw something up and pray someone will stop by. You get a site that is interactive and proactive. A site where you can build relationships with your visitors and turn them into return visitors and readers.

Talking about ways to make money using blogs, I would lay out 3 basic techniques to get things done;

• Google Adsense is one of the most easiest methods of drawing money from a high traffic blog. Getting your blog traffic is another important step, on which we have talked a lot many times and will continue to do that! For a quick step, choosing a few high rank keywords, catering to their usage and thus enabling you to come up in the top searches of google will help more traffic onto your blog page. The probability of making money through adsense if directly proportional to the number of people coming onto your blog. It is indeed a long term, stable income technique and most bloggers use it to pay off their bills!
• If you’re not a very established blogger but have a confidence in your writing, getting registered with good blogs by contacting their owners, who have a pay-per-post strategy is also a pretty decent way to make a start. This shall leverage you name and money, both. A slow but steady way of making money for good amateurs.
• Affiliate Marketing Programs are the most fruitful of all the methods used by people on the internet to earn money. Though the technique appears to be complex to most amateur bloggers and does involve a good monitoring of the traffic and conversion rates, deals, etc., people who know how to use it efficiently make millions. There are a lot of blogs which run only on affiliate marketing.

In the times of recession, when people are talking about the benefits of blogging and online business, internet marketing strategies and newer business models will definitely help WordPress bloggers earn money and involve themselves into profitblogging!

The basic concern for a blogger shall always be the determination of ways to increase traffic and attract attention. The social media channels effectively handle both. However, there has to be a background research done, of a social networking site in order to identify the pros. and cons. before relying on it. As a seasoned blogger and social media consultant, I believe it is important to target niche sites which offer the information you want to deliver. The trick here for a blogger lies in understanding the areas to focus on while he/she is writing for the correct promotion of a particular website, product or service.

As I pointed out earlier, role of social networks in blogging is about delivering the right communiqué to the target audience and the research here proves the same:

You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to understand the fact that the top 4 results prioritize the role of communication. A smart blogger would understand how to use the data in order to reach the desired results. Engaging in discussions with the readers, using services such as twitter, FaceBook and LinkedIn for promotion will help further.

Thus, for a blogger it is important that he/she implements the following;

1. Write content which people would standup and notice when linked via a social networking website.
2. Register and comment regularly on the blogs which form a part of the niche and are relevant to the domain one writes about.
3. Places social widgets on the blog which would take visitors to the social networking profiles.
4. Puts information on the profile which would get a target reader interested in one’s blog.

These steps when followed regularly would begin to show results in due course of time. It is important for a blogger to understand the role of social networking to the core. Social networking is all about conversations and traffic. It is thus important to be accountable for your actions and be faithful and trustworthy in nature for the people to get attracted to.

Brand4Profit reiterates the same by saying,

Social Media Marketing uses the power of attraction. Your friends have your best interests at heart and advertisers do not. Social Media Marketing is based on building trust and that foundation will make Social Media a dominant player in Marketing.

Therefore, for the successful creation and sustenance of an online brand such as a blog, it is important to establish a reader base by spreading the positive word of mouth. The innate significance of social networking lies in its ability to help increase awareness quotient of your blog.

Twitter says, “Twitter is a service for friends, family and co-workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing”?

But there also resides a business perspective to it which has to be strategized and to make twitter from just a social networking media to a profit blogging tool. Among a plethora of social networking sites which are used profitably for business, Twitter is one of the most used and successful social media practices today. There has been a remarkable transformation in the marketing environment from owning a website to direct marketing through personalized emails and messages to the current trend of using social media for free publicity and marketing of one’s own blog.

The key analysis lies here in understanding how Twitter can help an individual to promote his services/website/blog and the particular ways of implementing it. Twitter is about sharing your experiences online and helping people gain something from reading it. Sounds simple. Isn’t it? The key lies in a sound understanding of how to twitter.

As BlogForProfit writes, “Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send updates (or tweets; text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) to the Twitter website, via short message service (SMS), instant messaging, or a third-party application such as Twitterrific or twhirl”.

The most obvious question to ask here would be the reasons for someone opening a twitter account. The reasons are aplenty.

Micro-blogging tool is the most effective use of twitter where in you can post anything within 140 characters and increase the interest levels about the topic giving in a link to the original article. It is being used effectively to promote one’s own blog posts by broadcasting it in a ‘micro blogging platform’. There are Wordpress plugins which do this for you as soon as you hit the publish button on your WP blog! This short medium can be used by the followers and get broadcasted, subscribed and shared by people by getting involved in a conversation. It also enables people to vividly discuss and opine with the topics that you post on our blog giving them a platform to communicate and converse with each other in their own network. Though twitter is a self-policing site; some would prefer calling it a ‘decentralized social network’ with no formal rules, but there are a few rules of engagement which everyone should know and implement accordingly.

The marketing benefits a blogger can achieve by using twitter are –

1. Linking your blog to your twitter profile. All great and successful bloggers have it.
2. Use Twitter Tools to post your tweets from your blog. It increases visibility and traffic onto your blog.
3. Promote twitter on your blogs and vice versa.
4. dding plug-ins which enable automatic tweet every time you post on your blog.
5. Tweets can also be done if you do not post on your blog. The motive is to let your followers know anything interesting that you are doing.
6. Reply to tweets you receive and build a network of your own.
7. Basic Mantra for all marketers – Try and maintain long lasting relationships.

There are also a few basic strategies that companies/organizations/individuals can adopt to make their businesses successful by having an in-depth knowledge about the do’s and don’ts of Twitter. The specific strategies that need to be worked upon are;

• Establishing professional repute
• Customer Relationship Management
• Implementing promotional tools and generating sales
• Achieving Advocacy
• Efficient Event management and coverage

With the exponential increase in social networking sites and their immensely successful contribution to the business blogosphere, Twitter has already made its mark among them. And the question about its sustainability to business blogging and profit generation, I am sure that Twitter will keep tweeting. You may follow me @praval

If you’re looking for a better Twitter marketing solution do check out Viral Twitter Profits.

Over the past year, after speaking to god, Aweber’s tops minds have maneuvered the biggest u-turn among all their competitors, and have made Aweber not only relevant in the new Web 2.0 world, but an essential and integral part of it!

I was (probably) one of the first bloggers to start using the Aweber broadcast feature to integrate my RSS and email subscriptions, merge it and manage everything via an “ezine” format. This helped avoid choosing between building an email list or RSS list, since I could do both!

Since then a lot of bloggers have done the same, and in time Aweber was the top choice used by almost all bloggers in the “make money” niche including John Chow, Yaro Starak and Darren Rowse.

Then Aweber went a little further and introduced even more exciting features like the Feedburner integration, Twitter integration, email segmentation, and even their own “social proof” mechanism. Although other service like GetResponse followed suite with their own blog to email syndication service, it was perhaps a case of “too little too late”.

In fact, most bloggers who didn’t quite start out with direct marketing (like I did) have only ever used Aweber, due to strong recommendation from other bloggers. Besides, Justin Premrick does a excellent job at updating the Aweber blog with the best email marketing advice, tips, and tactics. His title of “education manager” further reveals Aweber’s strategy of perfecting the art of social marketing.

Aweber has also produced a lot of great online training and webinars. In short, they are no longer just an autoresponder service. They are also the experts, the market movers, and the source of great marketing knowledge. With their massive effort to reinvent themselves (after 9 years), I truly feel they have come to be synonymous with the term “email marketing” itself.

If you haven’t signed up with Aweber yet, I strongly recommend that you get yourself an account here: http://getstarted.aweber.com

You may have come across the idea of using PLR or Private Label Right articles. What this means is that you get ready-made article content to use in any way you want and it’s 100% yours. Most good PLR sites including PLR Product Reviews, PL Rights, PLR Gold and PLR Health Wizard can give you tons of content for a very low price.

If you use these PLR content in a ebook or physical newsletter there’s absolutely no issue. But when you try to use it as online blog / website content you’re hit with a juggernaut problem: DUPLICATE CONTENT.

The problem with PLR articles is that you’re not the only one using them. Yup, about 20-400 other people (depending on the PLR provider) have the exact article content. So the gurus say what you should do next is to “re-write” these articles to make them unique.

But that itself is a paradox – why spend your time re-writing PLR articles when you can just write new ones? Why outsource article rewriting, when you can outsource article writing? Get my point?

That’s the main reason why although I do use PLR content to create free PDF reports and email messages, I never used them as blog content. That has changed recently after I discovered these services:

• Article Marketing Automation – Publish / receive unique articles and get one-way links from blogs
• 1WayLinks – Publish / receive unique articles and get one-way links from blogs
• JetSubmitter – Publish unique articles and get one-way links fro article directories
• Firepow – complete blog network including getting / publishing unique content, one-way links and socal bookmarking and much more.

All those services gave me an opportunity not only to use PLR articles as unique blog content, but also as great SEO and link building tools.

Of course by using the services I mentioned, your main goal with a PLR article is to get as many backlinks as possible by submitting it as content for other blogs and article directories. However, with their built-in article spinner / randomizer functions you should be able to get a more unique version of your PLR article. So in a way it’s killing two birds with one stone – creating content and getting backlinks.

There have been various instances of contests such as The Copywriting contest on Copyblogger and Authority Blogger Contests at Chris Garret’s blog which had resulted in an enormous amount of traffic and fame. These contests had lucrative prizes which resulted in a buzz being spread around the blogosphere.

Some other blogs which have successfully staged contests are Darren Rowse’s Problogger and Daniel Scocco’s Daily Blog Tips. Needless to mention, the intention and the results were pretty same.

If you have a considerable amount of traffic and a decent social network of friends, it’s time now to hold a contest. Christmas and New Year are coming up. I think this is one of the best times to kick off a contest! If you’re planning to host a contest at your blog, remember the following points;

1. Keep it simple – The best way to promote the contest is to keep it simple and attractive. No one likes complicated things. A simple ‘comment on the contest post’ is the easiest way to get traffic and promotion. Also, it is very important to have a humor element attached to the contest. Isn’t participating in a contest supposed to be fun? Yes, it is.
2. Give away a prize – A prize is a prize, whatever it may be. To get more attention, it is advisable to have a prize which is distinct and would be great to give away. Apart from cash, laptops, digital entertainment devices etc. make a good prize. An attractive prize also gets people motivated to participate and thus helping your cause more.
3. Deadline date always works – There has to be a deadline which should be dependent on the traffic your blog generates. A longer deadline will make the reader develop a ‘will do it later’ attitude. I also depends on the traffic because a blog which runs a contest with less traffic should run it for longer time than a blog with a good amount of traffic in which the cones should be run for a smaller time.
4. Promote it – This is where many bloggers fail. Effective promotions can take place with the help of social networking sites by adding the post to them. This will help in spreading the word faster and into interested people. Also, add relevant keywords to the contest helping it to get listed on the search engines.
5. Contest publicity – PayPerPost, bloggerforum, Wahm Forum etc. are places where in one can publicize the contest. The information related to the contest can also be filled up at various sites which are picked up and publicized by other website owners.

You can turn a contest into a traffic builder for you. Something which most plugins might just not do even if they come bundled with free promises!

Here, I would like to share a list of top blogs on affiliate marketing;

1. Revenews

This is one of the oldest, most talked about and most successful blogs on affiliate marketing. The prominently discussed topics on this blog are online marketing, security issues, analytics, spyware, blogging, search engine optimization, affiliate marketing, contextual advertising and next generation marketing. There are relevant links which shows their partnerships and writers across the globe. After its successful launch in 1998, the site has undergone a few design changes and has made an attempt to provide articles which make a tremendous read to  industry gurus, top-level executives and CEO’s, plus many of the industry’s top netepreneurs.

2. Problogger

Problogger is a Darren Rowse venture who had made a success in the field of blogging with the help of affiliate marketing. This site is actually targeted at bloggers to add income streams and generate fabulous revenues out of their blog. It can be called a blog consulting site which offers a one stop solution to all issues related to blogging. This site has a well maintained homepage displaying top posts on blogging, relevant ads and partners and also has a mention about their sponsors.

3. Pepperjam Blog

This is one of the most successful online marketing agencies in the US. It has grown leaps and bounds in the last couple of years and has got many rewards and recognitions for their work. Their work is run from their own marketing agency whose main work is extensive professional consultation and management services across various fields like search engine marketing, affiliate marketing, online media planning and management.

4. Aojon

This blog operates under the user name Super Affiliate Marketing Blog and is a venture by and the title header actually shows a no nonsensical approach by the author. Primarily focused on the art and business of affiliate marketing, search engine optimization and viral marketing, this is one of the most read blogs across the affiliate marketing community.

5. 5 Star Affiliate Programs

Five Star Affiliate Program Blog is actually a blog which features various online programs and the potential revenue earning capacity out of every program. It actually focuses mainly on programs based in the US and has various partnerships with them. It also has blog articles which focus mainly on categories such as affiliate managers, blog contextual revenue, legal issues, niche marketing, search engine optimization and other web 2.0 applications.

6. ShoeMoney

Jeremy Schoemaker’s radical transformation from being a nerd to the owners of one of the most famous sites on affiliate marketing is an inspiring story. He basically focuses primarily on embracing new trends, new business opportunities, a keen eye on small changes and big revenue potential. This blog has a young feel to it with all latest albums, sponsors, ads and partnerships being displayed on an electric blue colored homepage. The blog posts are mostly about online marketing, advertising, affiliate marketing programs and videos about them.

7. Affiliate Marketing Blog by Shawn Collins

This blog by Shawn Collins is another top affiliate marketing blog. The posts are basically centered on the major theme affiliate marketing and its sub domains such as affiliate news, affiliate resources, affiliate managers etc. This is one of the few neat blogs with not much hyperlinks on the home page and the ‘about’ section shows the true credentials of the blog owner.

All of these blogs help thousands of affiliate marketers on a daily basis. If you’re planning your future into affiliate marketing niche, get them to your RSS reader and keep a watch for some good posts.