Article Marketing for SEO and Blog Traffic

As far as search engine optimization is concerned, there are three really important factors – content, links and more links.

As far as link building is concerned, article marketing has always been one of the fastest and most cost-effective ways of doing it. On ProfitBlogger I already covered Article Marketing Automation, 1 Way Links, 3 Way Links, FirePow and other useful tools for submitting articles via “blog networks”. Now lets take a look at traditional article marketing, which has been around for much, much longer.

With traditional article marketing there are a few key differences:

1. Your articles will be published on sites with higher authority and ranking, for example EzineArticles.com and GoArticles.com
2. You cannot get a way with writing crappy articles, since most sites worth submitting to will manually approve your articles
3. Instead of creating hyperlinks within the article content, you will only get a link back to your site in your author “resource box”

For niche blogging sites, article marketing has always worked beautifully and will always continue to do so. Article marketing by itself will not get you much direct traffic, but regularly submitting articles over time will get you indirect traffic from pretty awesome search engine rankings.

One software that I have used over the years is Submit Your Article by Steve Shaw. It’s one of the most advanced article submission programs around, with two unique features:

• Article Leverage – When you enter an article, you’ll be asked to enter many variations for individual sentences and the article title. When your articles are submitted to traditional article marketing sites, each site gets a unique version of your article.
• Article Trickle – Your articles are submitted slowly, so you get a more natural effect over time. Articles are queued and submitted automatically without your involvement.

Recently, Submit Your Article has changed it’s features drastically. Instead of limiting your articles to 8 / month, you can now submit an unlimited amount of articles. At just $37 month it’s definitely one of the tools you’ll want to have in your Internet marketing arsenal.

When you publish an article using the system, it gets published on:

• The SYA article directory itself, giving you an instant link back
• Popular article directories like EzineArticles, GoArticles, IdeaMarketers and more
• Article submission groups that accept email submissions
• Sites that syndicate content from the above mentioned article directories and groups

One article can get you at least 100-200 links back to your site. Plus, since SYA allows you to create unique variations, it helps to avoid the duplicate content penalty as as a result you get more valid links that are recognized by Google as being “unique”.

Info / Signup : Submit Your Article.

Most Common Affiliate Marketing Mistakes

Affiliate Marketing in simple terms can be defined as an act in which a website drives traffic to another with online marketing efforts to generate a lead, sell a product or get a membership.

Affiliate marketing has taken a high for the past few years and is a major source of income for a plethora of webmasters. Various websites have their affiliate programs running and they usually pay off a decent commission per sale.

However, just as every game has a few rules, Affiliate marketers should adhere to a few of them as well. We shall check out a few mistakes which an entry level affiliate marker usually makes;

• Not dedicating yourself to one before starting another – Many Affiliate marketers tend to start affiliating for several different websites to make easy money from each of them. But this is not an advisable practice especially when you are a beginner. You should try to first learn the basics of Affiliate Marketing and concentrate and grow your business. In order to understand what Affiliate marketing can offer you should first dedicate yourself to one program before starting another.

• Not concentrating on the pre-sale – An Affiliate marketer’s job is not to just sell the product but to concentrate on the pre-sale activity as well. Providing too much information on your website about your client will leave your client nothing to describe about his product. Alongside, providing too little information about your client’s product would end up visitor leaving the page without a deal. An Affiliates job is to describe the client’s product in such a manner that he feels inquisitive to click on your client’s link.

• Not using the product – Whenever you are selling a product you should be confident about it. “People buy from people you and not from the company”. You should have at least tried the product before you to sell it; this would give you a higher degree of confidence while selling the same.

• Not understanding pay-per-click – One should have a sound understanding of the pay per click if you want to become a successful Affiliate marketer. Pay per click advertisers use search engines to place their ads, but they pay only when the user finds their ad compelling and clicks on the ads to visit the advertisers web page. By using keywords, each advertiser can actually customize his/her pay per click advertising for a specific market of potential clients.

• Not choosing the right product for you - Very often Affiliate marketers choose the highest paying program which may not be right for them. While choosing the right program 3 things should be kept in mind: Time, Payout and Usability. Before deciding an affiliate program, it is important to understand how much time you will dedicate on it to make yourself successful.

• Not believing in yourself – If you think you can, you can. If you think you can’t, you’re right! You may feel a bit of apprehension in the beginning but later on once you understand the basics of Affiliate marketing and master them, you will become more confident and you could make it a successful business. Your excitement needs to translate confidence in yourself.

• Not committing yourself for affiliate marketing program – There are many affiliate programs out there out of which some are very popular and some are not . You need to do a lot of research in finding out the best one’s for you. You need to be committed and focused towards building your affiliate program.

Affiliate marketing is all about building a strong consumer base, finding the niche products and their prospective consumers and marketing the product efficiently over the web. Let’s hope these pointers do some good for you as an affiliate marketer.

Image courtesy: DoobyBrain

Best Blog Web Hosting Plan For WordPress Bloggers

Looking for a WordPress blog host? I’m sure there are tons of alternatives out there, each with a more confusing pricing scheme that the other, each offering you what seems to be something truly unique but in reality is the same old shit.

With Host Commando however, we are aiming to be the best blog web hosting service ever.

Unlike other blog hosting packages, Host Commando really gives you everything you need to start your first WordPress blog in record time:

1. Blog web hosting at competitive rates
2. Free WordPress blog installation & setup
3. Free Search Engine Optimization service
4. Free access to a massive collection of WordPress themes
5. Free “Blogging for Profits” guide
6. Free web marketing software and tools
7. Much more to come soon..

The Premium Blog Web Hosting plan is the best deal for new bloggers, but existing bloggers can also try the Basic Blog Web Hosting plan which is a cheaper “self-help” option.

A lot of our subscribers have been asking us to install and optimize WordPress for them, and Host Commando offers just that with their blog web hosting plans. Just fill up a simple form, and we do the rest.

Control HTML Better With the TinyMCE Advanced Plugin for WordPress

One thing I really hate about using WordPress is the built-in text / HTML editor. Although it has come a long way since version 2.5, and saw massive improvements in GUI and functionality in 2.7, it still leaves you wanting.

It’s especially frustrating if you’re trying to create a highly formatted post or sales page with WordPress, and you’ve been using something much better (like Dreamweaver) to do it all this while. With the TinyMCE Advanced plugin for WordPress however, this problem is largely solved.

The truth is, the TinyMCE user interface you see in WordPress is only half (or less) than the full set of features offered by the popular open source web editor. All the other functions have been hidden or disabled since the average blogger won’t need them anyway.

Once you install the TinyMCE Advanced plugin, you can access these “missing” buttons and put them back where they belong.

As you can see from the screenshot above, it’s easy to drag and drop buttons into and out of your TinyMCE editor. You can put the buttons you use most often right on top for easier access. The one feature you absolutely must enable is the buttons to create, edit and manage tables.

There are more features that you ca add, and you can even remove features in the default WordPress TinyMCE if you don’t really need them. Lastly, you can also choose to display all HTML tags in the “HTML view” of TinyMCE. If you’re familiar with HTML you’ll know that be default TinyMCE hides all paragraph (<p> and </p>) and line break (</br>) tags, as well as many others. Now you can choose to show them so you know exactly what’s going on in the HTML formatting of your post.

Download TinyMCE plugin for WordPress and give it a try. I’m sure you’ll fall in love with it.

WordPress Theme for Twitter Lovers: LiveTwit

September 9, 2009 | By Praval Singh | Comments Off

Tweet is the new kind of lingo. Unlike the clichéd conventional word today a tweet spreads faster made popular by the ever so wonderful Twitter.

So how about spreading this tweet that a new WordPress theme called LiveTwit is up for grabs? This is made simple by the theme itself which allows streaming live news of a topic or streaming tweets from a particular twitter user. All we are required to do is configure the theme to do its bit.

Layout

• LiveTwit is a typical two column layout theme with the left column making up the descriptive part of the website, i.e.; it contains the logo and a message to convey the highlight of the site. Also we would find the FriendMeUp box where the user may provide links to some external social media profiles.
• The right column is where all the streamed tweets are posted. This is continuously updated ensuring the reader follows the tweets as and when they are posted.
• The theme also has 5 vibrant color schemes to choose from depending upon the mood of the topic posted on the site.

Control Panel

Now to the all important question- how do we configure the theme to spread the word? This is very simple, just manipulate some 100 lines of code and we are all set to go. Already thinking of disowning this theme?

Well manipulating 100 lines of code is definitely not the way to go, for this very reason this theme offers a very simple built-in theme control panel which helps the user to setup and change any aspect of the theme. A few tweaks in the color scheme, search criterion – be it a particular topic or a particular twitter user, logo URL and the social media links and the site is up and running with all the tweets related to the search criterion being displayed.

This theme is definitely the easiest way to create a quick site to give a heads-up on some hot ongoing topics, events or even businesses.

View the demo of this theme and ofcourse it is free, so go ahead and download it.

Tweet!

10 Steps Towards Choosing Blogging As a Profession

Seven out of 10 bloggers I know blog for money, and there is no wrong in it provided as long as one follows some blogging etiquettes. A blog is a platform to express or share one’s opinion about topics which may or may not form a niche.

With the power of words and the underlying expertise, this opinion is converted to a principle and hence one starts making money. For professional bloggers, it becomes highly significant to not only create good content but also get good traffic, just because most monetization programs do not depend on content but traffic. Both of these factors are extremely important for a blogger to mint money.

Web traffic is such a paradoxical term which makes people dread about it offline, but get into its amorous embracement online. More the traffic on a blog, more are the chances to generate money.

Out of million bloggers on the web today, a very miniscule percentage of them are able to earn money out of their blogs. This is because most of the bloggers do not know the the correct way of presenting stuff to their audience.

Today, we shall check out some of the proven ways to work on, in case you’ve decided to quit your day job;

You got to research well to know the kind of topics that people like to read online. A small work around over the web will make you know that technology focused or product oriented blogs are the most read. This is one of the most targeted niche by bloggers, both amateurs and experienced. There are various others which you need to find out. Remember to write on topics which people like to read more as it increases your chances to make money. However, content is the king!

1. Implement traffic building strategies for your blog by registering at various forums, social networking sites and communities like twitter, reaching out to other bloggers, posting quality content and regularly updating of the content. More importantly, if there is an increase in traffic; it is important to sustain it by working harder.
2. Making ‘coffee money’ is not a big deal. So placing ads on your blog when it is new will not help anyone much. But, again this is a debatable topic and many would disagree with me by saying that ads should be displayed from the initial days. But, I would always prefer a strategy of ‘wait to monetize.’
3. If you’re thinking of minting money through ads, Google Adsense is one of the most widely used methods to monetize your content. The money that a blog generates depends on the category of the blog and the related ads being displayed on the page. The Adsense program has made many a bloggers rich and been one of the most effective mediums to make money from a blog.
4. A blogger can also look for paid writing positions on different blogs. If you have carved a niche for yourself, it becomes easy to write for others and your own successful blog becomes a testimony of your blogging skills. The motivation here should be to bring good name to your blog with exposure and experience on writing at top blogs, the additional income being an icing over the cake.
5. Determine new ways of income apart from the traditional ones. Look for new contracts that will fetch you a lucrative income. Publishing a book, selling personalized products and services, etc. are some of the methods by which a lot of established bloggers make money.
6. Indulge into Affiliate Marketing. It is good to initialize your affiliate marketing skills by promoting products that you like. R.T. Butcher clarifies the practical application of affiliate marketing when he writes, “Just find a merchant on one of the many affiliate networks (search Google) and place a link or banner on your blog. Whenever someone leaves your blog through the banner or link and purchases that product you can earn a commission”.
7. One of the hottest methods to earn money is by selling ad space on your blog. An ever increasing number of companies act as an interface between a blogger and an advertiser to get relevant ads on your blog that will become another money making tool for you. The key here is to strike a good balance between the ads and the content; otherwise the results can be disastrous.
8. If there is a demand of the various posts you write on your blog, you can sell fresh content to other blogs and make money. Selling content has made quite a few bloggers help run their businesses better. SEOmoz is one of the leading SEO firms which have successfully sold memberships on their site which gives an access to quality content.
9. It is also advisable to have a good set of widgets on your blog as they can augment your blog. Joining a site such as BuySellAds, WidgetBucks helps a blogger get advertising widgets to display in addition to being in rich media format which increases the aesthetics of your blog.

These were a few methods which have been tried and tested in the blog-o-sphere. One needs to be highly active and must be a quick learner to accommodate with the dynamics of money minting strategies on the web.

WordPress Plugin: BackType Connect

August 31, 2009 | By Praval Singh | Comments Off

When a news is doing the rounds in the internet world, a considerable amount of time is spent discovering the different opinions or views expressed by people all over the world. More often than not these discussions are carried out on social networking sites and blogs making search an uphill task. So how does one keep tabs of these views pertaining to a particular conversation? The can be addressed by a utility called BackType Connect.

BackType Connect is a utility developed by Y Combinator startup BackType. This utility allows users to find comments posted on other blogs, social networking sites such as Twitter and other services pertaining to a topic by entering the URL of the topic as a search criterion on their website. This particularly useful service has been developed as a plugin for WordPress allowing bloggers to integrate the features of this utility into their blog posts.

Value Additions

A few value adding features of this plugin are as follows.

Tracking and Consolidation: Readers can find articles, comments and active conversations about their topics of interest all consolidated in one area. Currently the plugin supports conversations from Twitter, FriendFeed, Digg, Reddit, Hacker News and few other blogs. Also bloggers can keep a track of their posts as to where readers are engaging in them.

Customizing: The plugin can be customized to serve according to the preferences of the blogger. The blogger can specify the sources from which the comments should be consolidated from. Also the blogger can ask the plugin to order the comments from different sources based on timestamp allowing readers to follows conversations as they happen or can group all of them at the end of the blog comments. Bloggers can also determine the number of comments from a particular source by adding a summary section.

However there could be some concern over the utilities ability to work to its full potential for larger posts.

Installation

Note: It is recommended that you backup your database before installing

1. Download the plugin from here.
2. Unzip the plugin and upload the backtype-connect directory to /wp-content/plugins/
3. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
4. Configure the plugin through the ‘Settings’ > ‘BackType Connect’ menu option
5. Click the ‘Enable’ button to start importing comments.

Upon installation and activation the plugin imports comments and conversations into the WordPress comment system for the particular blog using the URL as a query. It includes icons to the comments indicating the source of the comments, along with a footnote.

Points to Remember

1. Although this is a very useful plugin be advised that it could cause a little too much pain when used with all the functions enabled. Customize the plugin according to your preferences else your blog post might land up being flooded with new comments and conversations increasing noise in your blog.
2. To discover the full potential of BackType Connect sync would be necessary if you are using a comment system like Disqus or Intense Debate instead of the built in comment system of WordPress.

Remember to take care of these points and brace yourself to discover the potential of this utility.

Blogging 101 – Spreading the Word

August 28, 2009 | By Praval Singh | Comments Off

The first article in this series was about the importance of research and writing on a blog. The next best thing that can happen to your blog is – spreading the word about your blog.

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

Blogging 101 – Partnerships And Campaigns

Blogging is carried out of many drives, be it financial, social or even out of one’s inner drive. These motivational factors lead to continuous developments in the form and execution of blogging. In recent times, blogging has achieved new dimensions like partnerships and campaigns that we’ll talk about today.

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

Blogging 101 – Top tools to monetize your blog

After the process of setting up a blog, working with the basics and promoting it, it’s time to milk some money out of your hard work. No doubt it’s not a cake walk but at the same time, it isn’t a rocket science either. We shall look at some of the monetization programs which you can opt for your blog.

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.

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Blogging 101 – Optimizing Your Blog

I hope you’ve been keeping a tab on the series – “Blogging 101”. This is the fifth and the last post in the series.

Today, we shall deal with one of the most important concerns of a blogger – Optimization of a blog. This is a a tricky process and often involves spending long working hours on the blogs. It has given a lot of bloggers several sleepless nights, testing ad units and their placements and finding an appropriate network to get on board. Boosting your profits can be simple if you are a keen observer and can interpret and match the layout of your blog with a great theme. Having your own winning formula apart from the money you make from your content consistently includes ad placement skill, use of  plug-ins, choice of colors, text, etc. which can make a big difference.

Let us focus on few requirements which can shape your idea to fit into the frame of profit making business.

Suggested Plug-ins

It is strongly recommended to spend some time making your website appear distinguished, particularly if your aim is to eventually decrease the bounce rate. Plug-ins for the Wordpress play a great role in helping you out with this.

There are a lot of plugins which bloggers use to get the best out of a blog. We shall check out 5 of the must have plugins to help you run a blog at ease. Some of the plug-ins are especially useful in reducing your ‘hand-work’ to the bare minimum and makes managing your Wordpress blog easy.

1. All in One (SEO) – By far the most widely used plugin to get that search engine optimization you always wanted. The pack allows you to specify the title, description and keywords for your blog and individual posts.
2. Akismet – Spams are a blog’s worst enemy! This plug-in comes with a standard installation of Wordpress and virtually eliminates spam comments, reducing your burden to mark them as spam manually.
3. Related Posts – A major problem a blogger faces is to dig through old posts that are related and manually link them in the new post. This problem is solved with Related posts which inserts relevant posts automatically.
4. Wordpress Database Backup - Backing up your blog is crucial and this plug-in allows you to back up everything in no time.
5. Top Commentators - It lists the visitors who have commented for most number of times on your blog, hence showcasing their name on your blog. You may find a lot of commentators returning back seeing their name in the list! It also adds value to your blog to help new visitors to stay longer to dig into your blog’s content.

Positioning of Advertisements

Perhaps one of the most common mistake that a newbie blogger makes is with the positioning of advertisement itself. The theory is pretty simple – if you have the capability to analyze where people actually look while exploring your blog, you have solved half of your query.

When you look at the front page of blogs like that of ProBlogger Darren, you will notice that only a part of the page is displayed and to see everything on the page you need to scroll down. The elements of a website below the fold are seen by significantly less readers than elements above the fold resulting in lower conversion of ads.

The content of your blog is another place where most of your readers are drawn to. Different bloggers have different opinions on the positioning of the ads between the posts. Say - Engadget places a rectangle AdSense unit between the second and third posts on the front page. The Movie Blog uses a rectangle ad directly under titles and aligned left on individual pages. Practically, there is not just one thumb rule. You need to experiment to find what works best for you. Your ads are often accepted differently by different visitors

All in all, you need the best optimization to unleash the profit potential lurking in your blogs. Convert your blog into a cash-cow with mantras like ads placement, software store commissions, your own products, your affiliate program etc. Opt for a good color combination if you’re getting your blog designed. Alternatively, you may intelligently choose a free theme or one of those paid themes like Thesis.

Image credits: Jose U

Blogging 101 – The Basics: Research & Writing

The striking catchphrase used in the world of online marketing today is the “Affiliate marketing” which can be twigged directly with the e-business. The rules is, “People have their websites & web communities where they build an opportunity to display various advertisements. Any reference to transaction from the ads will furnish them commission.”

The underlying concept of “Affiliate marketing” is fairly simple but sometimes people get entrapped in the web of intricacies.

If you are interested in knowing the nitty-gritty of the profit making program, various ways to optimize the profits and the dos and don’ts while directing your business towards what I shall call as blogging bonanza read the articles at the series Profit blogging 101 which will have a interrelated flow of thoughts on this naive concept.

The very thought of making money online sounds exciting. Knowing the right way is a matter of paramount importance. That said, affiliate marketing is not as easy as perceived as it requires focus, effort, creativity and money. The results aren’t immediate but often unimaginably big over a period of time. Blogging is one of the best ways to get started with making money online if you are sincere about your efforts.

Here are few techniques bloggers can use to find readers and the key to open the lock for earning money. As Yaro Starak once mentioned,

“Eventually once you establish enough momentum you gain what is called “traction”, which is a large enough audience base (about 500 readers a day is good) that you no longer have to work too hard on finding new readers. Instead your current loyal readers do the work for you through word of mouth.”

• Relevance of research: If you need to make your blog successful, it has to be backed up by an in depth-research on your area of writing, the digital assets to be used on the blog, having knowledge about various affiliate programs and on various other grey areas. You need to constantly consult with the ones who are into blogging. A proper know-how can help in bagging of an easy five-digit income as earned by many bloggers.
• Write one new blog post per day minimum. You have to keep your blog fresh with a daily news or short article style post. This demonstrate to first time visitors that your blog is updated every day and makes them feel if they subscribe to your blog feed they will surely find something new with each new day. ProBlogger in one of its post has put forth that “Daily posting is great, but don’t stretch yourself too thin early on. Two quality posts a week is better than 7 average ones.”
• Start commenting on other blogs: One of the best ways to find readers for your blog is to comment on other people’s blogs. Focus on dropping comments on blogs which are in the similar niche of writing as that of yours as these bloggers will be interested to revert back and visit your blog.
• Importance of writing: The core requirement of your blog is quality writing. The flow of your writing is the second requirement which will keep the readers preoccupied with the previous paragraphs. Having sub-headings and bullet points in a post add to its attraction and makes it easier for the readers to relate to the concept.

There are many other things that can be incorporated in the list liking networking opportunities, advertising programs (Adsense, recent additions are Chitika’s eMiniMalls and WidgetBucks, Text Link Ads.) There are several strategies you can choose if you’re interesting in making money from blogs. You can experiment with several of these methods in order to develop a better grasp of how blogs work or you can zero in on a strategy that appeals to you the most. As said by Yaro Starak: “Affiliate income is the most significant source of revenue I have for my blogs”, which is the winning point.

Look out for the second post in this series to know about “Spreading the Word” about your blog.

Image credits: Kristina B & Andyp UK

Automatic Affiliate Commissions from Your Blog

First introduced in May 2008, the affiliate widget got a lot of attention from our affiliates. The reason is simple – affiliates get autopilot income with no extra effort.

All you need to do is use the widget, and it will automatically display some of my best-selling products which are literally guaranteed to get you affiliate sales in no time. Assuming of course you have some level of traffic to your blog

Anytime we add a new product they are automatically added to the widget and you don’t need to lift a finger..

Now you can download the Profit Blogger Affiliate Widget version 2.0, which takes everything one step further. Now you can select the type of ads you want to display – 125px ads, 250px ads, or product covers in 3 different sizes. You can also use custom CSS to match everything to your blog.

For more information, refer to the affiliate program page and download the widget there.

Wordpress Plugin – Desktop Comment Moderator

When a blog continues to publish some good content, the visitors come back again. The more they get attached to the blog, more likely it gets to see their comments on individual posts. In due course of time, when you begin to get a lot of comments, it gets difficult to log on to the WordPress admin panel and approve/deny a comment.

How about controlling the entire comment system for you blog from a standalone desktop application? One that runs on the Adobe air platform!

Moderator is just that! A great WordPress plugin that has proved to be a boon to web publishers. All you need to do is install the plugin to your WP blog, download and install Adobe AIR and the corresponding setup file for the Moderator plugin to set your comment system on a drool! You will not need to log on to the admin panel of your blog in just order to approve the comments.

Few of the features of this awesome plugin include;

• Accept, delete, and spam comments from within the desktop client.
• System tray notification for un-moderated comments.
• Gravatar icons for the user comments.

The plugin has a minimum requirement of  WordPress 2.6+ of  and Adobe AIR 1.1.

Installation

1. Download the plugin bundle.
2. Unzip the contents of the archive to Wordpress install}/wp-content/plugins.
3. Activate the Moderator plugin by clicking on the ‘Activate’ link in the entry for this plugin.
4. Go to the Settings tab and select the Moderator admin page. Follow the instructions on the page to install the desktop client.

Check out the plugin if you have regular comments on the blog. You will never wish to log on to your blog to moderate the comments.

The plugin has been developed by Daniel Dura who is a Platform Evangelist at Adobe focusing on the Flash Platform.