4 Steps to Increase Your Blog Traffic

One of the most common complaints that I hear from bloggers is the fact that no matter how hard they try, they can’t grow their blogs past 100 or so daily page vies. Those early days are indeed the hardest, because you need to put hard work in without the certainty of achieving results.

If you are in that same situation, here is a simple strategy that will certainly increase your blog traffic and make you break the 1,000 daily page views mark. In fact, the strategy could be used even if your are already over that number but have reached a traffic plateau lately.

Just make sure to execute the 4 steps as planned and to spend the two hours and a half every day (obviously if you have more time available you can expand the time spent on each of the four steps proportionally).

First Step: Killer Articles (1 hour per day)

Spend one hour brainstorming, researching and writing killer articles (also called linkbaits, pillar articles and so on).

Notice that your goal is to release one killer article every week. If that is not possible aim for one every 15 days. So the one hour that you will spend every day will be dedicated to the same piece. In other words, expect killers articles to take from 5 up to 10 hours of work.

If you are not familiar with the term, a killer article is nothing more than a long and structured article that has the goal of delivering a huge amount of value to potential visitors. If you have a web design blog, for example, you could write an article with “100 Free Resources for Designers”. Here are some ideas for killer articles:

• create a giant list of resources,
• write a detailed tutorial teaching people how to do something,
• find a solution for a common problem in your niche and write about it, or
• write a deep analysis on a topic where people have only talked superficially

When visitors come across your killer article, you want them to have the following reaction: “Holy crap! This is awesome. I better bookmark it. Heck, I better even mention this on my site and on my Twitter account, to let my readers and friends know about it.”

Second Step: Networking (30 minutes per day)

Networking is essential, especially when you are just getting started. The 30 minutes that you will dedicate to it every day could be split among:

• commenting on other blogs in your niche,
• linking to the posts of bloggers in your niche, and
• interacting with the bloggers in your niche via email, IM or Twitter.

Remember that your goal is to build genuine relationships, so don’t approach people just because you think they can help to promote your blog. Approach them because you respect their work and because you think the two of you could grow together.

Third Step: Promotion (30 minutes per day)

The first activity here is the promotion of your killer articles. Whenever you publish one of them, you should push it in any way you can. Examples include:

• letting the people in your network know about it (don’t beg for a link though),
• letting bloggers and webmasters in relevant niches know about it,
• getting some friends to submit the article to social bookmarking sites,
• getting some friends to Twitter the article, and
• posting about the article in online forums and/or newsgroups.

If there is time left, spend it with search engine optimization, social media marketing and activities to promote your blog as whole. Those can range from keyword research to promoting your blog on Facebook and guest blogging.

Fourth Step: Normal Posts (30 minutes per day)

Just like a man does not live by bread alone, a blog does not live by killer articles alone. Normal posts are the ones that you will publish routinely in your blog, between the killer articles. For example, you could publish a killer article every Monday and normal posts from Tuesday through Friday. Here are some ideas for normal posts:

• a post linking to an article on another blog and containing your opinion about it
• a post informing your readers about a news in your niche
• a post asking a question to your readers and aiming to initiate a discussion
• a post highlighting a new resource or trick that you discovered and that would be useful to your readers

While killers articles are essential to promote your blog and bring new readers aboard, normal posts are the ones that will create diversity in your content and keep your readers engaged.

50 Simple Ways to Gain RSS Subscribers

Most bloggers love their RSS readers. Not only that, but they also love to gain new RSS readers. It is such a joy when you wake up one day and see that your Feedburner count jumped by 200 or 300, right?

Those days are quite rare though, and most people seem to have a hard time gaining even a small number of new RSS subscribers consistently.

Is there anything you can do about it? Any way to efficiently attract more RSS subscribers?

Sure there is. Many people wrote about this topic in the past, but I wanted to give my take on the issue too. I wrote those 50 ideas as they were coming to my head, as briefly as possible. Enjoy.

1. Have a big RSS icon. People are lazy. You need to keep that fact always in mind. If you use a little RSS icon, visitors might have a problem finding it. Most of those will just give up after a couple of seconds, so make sure the RSS icon is big and easily recognizable.

2. Display the RSS icon above the fold. Apart from using a big RSS icon, you must make sure that you display it above the fold. That is where most blogs have one, and that is where people are used to look for when they want to subscribe, so go with the flow.

3. Display the RSS icon on every page of your blog. When I started blogging I did this mistake. Only my homepage used to have an RSS icon…. As soon as I added it to every single page on the blog, the number of subscribers jumped.

4. Use words. Depending on your audience, just using an RSS icon might not be effective. If they aren’t tech-savvy, they might not know what that little orange thing is. In those cases, you can write a small message explaining that subscribing will allow them to keep updated with your posts and so on.

5. Write a post asking for people to subscribe. Ever heard the saying “Ask and thou shalt receive”? This principle works on most areas of our lives. Blogging is no exception. If you want people to subscribe to your feed, ask them to! Write a post about it, give them some reasons and you will see how they respond.

6. Use the FeedSmith plugin. Unless you hand code a lot of redirects on your blog, readers will still be able to subscribe to different RSS feeds provided by WordPress. This plugin will make sure that all your subscribers will be forwarded to the Feedburner feed, so that you can track them and control how your feed is formatted.

7. Offer email subscriptions. Like it or not, only a small percentage of the Internet users know about or use RSS feeds. Studies confirm that this number is below 10% around the world. Why would you want to miss the other 90% of the pie? If you use Feedburner, you just need to go on the “Publicize” tab to activate your email subscriptions.

8. Use an email subscription form. For most bloggers, an email subscription form will convert better than a simple “Subscribe via email” link. That is because Internet users are used to seeing those forms around, and typing their email address there is quite intuitive. The top of your sidebar is a good spot to place one.

9. Encourage readers to subscribe at the bottom of every post. Apart from having an RSS icon and email subscription form above the fold, it is also important to place them below each single post. Why? Because right after people finish reading your articles, they will look for something to do next, and subscribing to your blog is a good option. Additionally, if the article they just read was really good, they will be on the right mindset to subscribe and receive more of your articles in the future.

10. As few steps as possible. People are lazy (I know I mentioned it before, but it is worth re-emphasizing). The fewer the steps required for them to subscribe to your blog, the better. If you can reduce the number of clicks required, therefore, do it!

11. Use icons to offer subscription on the most popular RSS readers. One practical thing that you can do to reduce the number of steps required to subscribe to your feed is to use RSS reader specific icons (e.g., “Add to Google Reader” or “Subscribe on Bloglines”). Just analyze the most common RSS readers among your subscribers and add those icons to the sidebar.

12. Have clear focus on your blog. If you write about 10 different topics, it will be hard to convince people to subscribe to your blog. They might like your articles about technology, but they would hate to receive the house cleaning ones…. Having a clear focus is one of the most efficient ways to attract subscribers.

13. Publish new posts frequently and consistently. By frequently I mean publishing many posts per week or even per day, and by consistently I mean sticking with that frequency religiously. Those two factors will communicate to the visitors that your blog is active, and that subscribing to the RSS feed might be the best way to stay updated with it indeed.

14. Don’t exaggerate. While writing many posts per week or per day is usually a good thing, there is a limit to it. Many people mention that if a certain blog starts overwhelming them with dozens of new posts a day, they will just unsubscribe. The exceptions to this rule are the blogs on fast paced niches like gadget news.

15. Write valuable content. People will only subscribe to your RSS feed if there is some value that they can derive from it. This value might come from different different factors depending on your audience: it may come from the breaking news that you offer, from the deep analysis that you write, or from the funny things you say and so on, but it must be there.

16. Write unique content. You content might be valuable, but if people can find it elsewhere, they will have no reason to subscribe to your RSS feed. For example, suppose you copy all posts from a popular blog on your niche, say Lifehacker. You content would still be valuable, but it would not be unique, and most people would end up subscribing to the original source.

17. Don’t ramble or go off topic. If your blog has a clear focus as we suggested before, readers will subscribe to it for a very specific reason. If you then start writing about off topic stuff, it will annoy a great part of them. Just consider that a bad or unrelated post is worse than no post at all, since it might make some of your readers actually unsubscribe.

18. Use your RSS feed link when commenting on other blogs. Many bloggers have the habit of commenting on other people’s blogs. Some do it simply to join the conversation. Others because they want to promote their own blogs and generate some traffic. Either way, you can leave your RSS feed link instead of the website one to encourage people to subscribe to your feed (if you use Feedburner, they will be able to see your content anyway).

19. Run a contest. Contests are very popular on the blogosphere. If you have a somewhat popular blog, in fact, it is not difficult to raise some prizes and create one. By making subscribing to your RSS feed a requirement to participate, you could quickly boost the number of subscribers that you have. If you want to control who is going to take this action, use the email subscription method.

20. Offer random prizes to your subscribers. If you are not a fan of contests and competitions, you could always entice people to subscribe to your RSS feed by giving away random prizes. For example, if some company approaches you to donate some free copies of its product, you could in turn donate it to your subscribers

21. Write guest posts. Guest posts represent a very efficient technique for generating both brand awareness and traffic. If you guest blog on a popular blog on your same niche, there is also a good chance that a good percentage of that incoming traffic will end up subscribing to your feed.

22. Welcome the new readers. Whenever you manage to land a guest post on a really popular blog, or when you get mentioned on a larger website or mainstream site, it could be a good idea to write a specific post to welcome those readers. Use that post to describe your blog briefly, to talk a bit about yourself, and to encourage them to subscribe.

23. Go popular on social bookmarking sites. Some people say that the quality of the traffic coming from social bookmarking sites (e.g., Digg and StumbleUpon) is very low. This is true to some extent, because those visitors will rarely click on anything on your page (including on the subscribe link). Because of the sheer amount of traffic that you can get on those sites, however, even a really small conversion rate could easily mean 200 or 300 new subscribers in a matter of 24 hours.

24. Explain to your readers what is RSS. As we mentioned before, it is estimated that less than 10% of the popular know about or use RSS feeds. Can you do anything about this? Sure you can! Write a post teaching your readers what RSS is, why it is good, and how they can start using it. It works particularly well on blogs that have a non tech-savvy audience.

25. Have a special “Subscribe” page with all the info and links there. Apart from writing a specific post teaching your readers about RSS, you can also create a special “Subscribe” page on your blog where you explain briefly how to use RSS feeds, and place all the subscription links, badges, and email forms. You could then link to that page from the sidebar, with a link that would say “Subscription Options” or “How to subscribe.”

26. Create a landing page on your blog to convert visitors in subscribers. If you are going to purchase some banners or other type of advertising, it is highly recommended that you create a landing page to receive those visitors on the best way possible. Use that page to describe your blog, to highlight your best content, and to ask them to subscribe. When doing guest blogging, you could use this page as the byline link as well.

27. Send traffic to that page using PPC. Pay-per-Click advertising, like Google AdWords, is one of the cheapest ways to send targeted traffic to your site. Depending on the quality score that you get (this is calculated from the AdWords side) you could start getting visitors for as low as $0.01 each. That is, with $100, you could send up to 10,000 visitors to your landing page. With a 1% conversion rate this would mean 100 new subscribers.

28. Write an ebook and ask people to subscribe in order to download it. Whether you like them or not, eBooks are a part of the Internet. Many people write them, many others download and read them. If the content and the promotion are well structured, you have thousands of people wanting to read yours. What if you then require people to subscribe first before they can download it? That would bring a heck lot of new subscribers.

29. Launch an email newsletter with Aweber. An email newsletter can be used to complement the content on most blogs. You send a weekly email to those subscribers with your insider views of your niche, with some extra tips, tools and so on. If you then choose Aweber for your newsletter, you can use the “Blog Broadcast” feature to turn those newsletter subscribers into RSS readers too (they will receive a weekly summary from your feed).

30. Offer a full feed. If your goal is to have as many subscribers as possible, then offering a full RSS feed is the only way to go. Many people get annoyed by partial feeds, and even if that does not discourage them from subscribing at first, it might make them unsubscribe shortly after.

31. Clutter your website with ads. This point is a funny/weird addition to the list, and I don’t recommend anyone doing it. I didn’t invent this though, and I saw some people in the past talking about it. The idea is simple: if you clutter your website with many flashy and intrusive ads, but offer top quality content anyway, some people might get an urge to subscribe to your RSS feed just to avoid the clutter on the website….

32. Don’t clutter your RSS feed with ads. Just as too many ads on your site can scare visitors away, too many ads or badges or links on your RSS feed can make people unsubscribe. Keep the RSS feed as clean as possible. That is what people expect to have when they subscribe to an XML file, after all.

33. Use social proof. Ever entered into a restaurant because the place was packed with people, or didn’t enter one because it was empty? That is social proof in action. If you have a good number of RSS subscribers already (I would say over 500), you could display it on your site using the Feedburner feed count widget. This might motivate people to give your RSS feed a shot.

34. Offer breaking news. RSS feeds are one of the most efficient ways to keep up with sites that are frequently updated with information that you care about. If you manage to break some news, or to offer frequent updates on popular topics (like stock market alerts), people would have a stronger motivation to subscribe.

35. Mention that subscribing to your blog is free. It might sound strange, but many people actually get confused with the “Subscribe” terminology. I received dozens of emails over the past year from people that wanted to know if there was any cost associated with subscribing to my RSS feeds! To avoid any confusion, it could be worth mentioning that subscribing to your blog is free, so instead of “Subscribe to my RSS feed” you could use “Receive our updates for free.”

36. Use pop-ups to encourage subscription to your newsletter. Darren managed to increase his conversion rate by more than 700% using pop-ups. Sure, they are intrusive, but they work like nothing else. If you already have an established and loyal following, perhaps using this technique wouldn’t hurt your traffic. We also did a recent poll on the topic.

37. Use an animated RSS feed icon to draw attention. Animated ads get a much higher click-through rate, exactly because they move around and draw people’s attention. You can use the same technique with your RSS feed icon, and make it an animated GIF to call the attention of the visitors.

38. Use feed directories. Don’t expect to receive hundreds of new subscribers by using this technique, but every small bit helps right? Some people use feed directories to find new RSS feeds and content to subscribe to, so if you have some free time you could submit yours on those sites. Here is a list with almost 20 feed directories.

39. Email first time commentators encouraging them to subscribe. Sending a personal email to your first time commentators is a kind gesture, and many will thank you for that. You could use this opportunity to remind them that they can stay updated with your blog via the RSS feed. There is also plugin called Comment Relish that can automate this process, although it becomes less personal.

40. Make sure the feed auto-discovery feature is working. Most modern browsers have an auto-discovery feature that tried to identify if the website you are visiting has a valid RSS feed. If they do, the browser will present a small RSS icon on the right side of the address bar. So make sure that your can see that icon while visiting your blog, and click on it to see if the right RSS feed will pop. On WordPress you can edit this part on the header.php file.

41. Offer a comments feed. If you have an active community of readers who often engage in discussions on the comments section of your blog, you could consider offering a comments RSS feed.

42. Offer category feeds. If you have many categories on your blog, you could offer an RSS feed for each of them individually. This would enable visitors that are interested only in specific topics to subscribe to them and not to the whole blog. At the same time this granularity could increase the overall number of RSS subscribers you have.

43. Run periodic checks on your feeds. It is not rare to find blogs around the web with a broken RSS feed. Click on your own feed once in a while to make sure that the link is working, that the feed is working, and that it is a valid XML document.

44. Recover unverified email subscribers. You will notice that good percentage of your email subscribers will never confirm their subscription. Some are lazy, some just don’t understand the process. This percentage can go as high as 30%, so you could end up losing many would-be subscribers there. Fortunately you can email those unverified subscribers and remind them about the problem. It works for some.

45. Leverage an existing blog or audience. If you already have a popular blog, newsletter, forum, twitter account and so on, you could leverage that presence to get new subscribers. People that already follow you in some place will have a higher chance of subscribing to you new blog, especially if they like your work or person.

46. Use cross feed promotion. Find some related blogs that have a similar RSS subscriber base, and propose to the blogger to use a cross feed promotion deal. That is, you promote his blog on your feed footer, and he promotes your blog on his feed footer.

47. Use testimonials on your “Subscribe” page. You probably have seen how most product sales pages on the web use testimonials, right? That is because a personal recommendation from a third party goes a long way into convincing a prospect. If that is the case, why not use testimonials to convince people to subscribe to your RSS feed?

48. Get friends to recommend your site and RSS feed on their blog. Even stronger than having a testimonial on your “Subscribe” page is to have someone recommend you on his own blog or website. Many of his readers will pay attention to the message and head over to your blog to check what the fuzz is about.

49. Do something funny or weird while asking for people to subscribe. People love blogs with a sense of humor. If you can make them laugh, you have took them half way into subscribing. Some months ago I published theHuge RSS Icon Experiment, and gained 300 new subscribers in 3 days.

50. Start a long series so people subscribe to keep update with it. Long and structured series of posts are not only traffic magnets, but also RSS readers magnets. If a casual visitor discovers that you are publishing a long series about a topic he is interested on, he will think about subscribing in order to not miss the future posts of the series.

How To Keep New Content Flowing On To Your Blog

As all bloggers know, the initial setting up of the website is just the beginning. Unlike static websites where information remains the same for many months at a time, blogs (especially newly established blogs) need to be updated frequently to remain or start ranking in search engines. Chances are, most of us who run blogs to make money have more than one project on our hands, and therefore, may not have time to update it daily.

Wake Up Early

One of the techniques I personally use is to wake up early. On a normal day, I will wake up at 5:00 AM and go to the gym to work out. Going to the gym gives me time to think about what I want to write about while getting my blood moving at the same time. By 6:00, I am ready to go home and start blogging for the day… My process usually starts with browsing blogs that are in my same niche. If I am going to write on my technology blog, I will spend 10-20 minutes browsing other technology blogs for inspiration. After I figure out two or three topics I want to write about, I jot them down on my whiteboard, along with a few key points I want to talk about. After I write about 2-3 posts, I will then continue on to my next project, whether it be a web design client, another blog, etc.

Schedule Posts

If you’re the type of person who works during the weekdays, but has off on the weekends (such as a school teacher), then it may be hard for you to update your blog during the week. What’s good for you is that WordPress (and other blogging software) will allow you to schedule posts. This will allow you to write ten articles over the weekend and schedule each one to automatically post itself on a certain day and time. This won’t work for news blogs that need to be updated as soon as the news breaks, but for things like how-to blogs and editorials, it will work perfectly.

Invite Guest Bloggers

Every blogger out there (that is, the ones who are ambitious) is always looking for a blog to guest write on. If you are having troubles being able to write the content on your own, invite guest bloggers to submit articles for free. Also allow them to include one backlink that will go to their own blog. This not only helps build you free content, but it helps the guest blogger build backlinks.

Hire a Writer

If you can’t seem to attract guest bloggers, there is always the option of paying somebody to write content for you. There are many “professional bloggers” out there that are looking for freelance writing tasks, but you could also hire a teenager looking for a job. The advantages of hiring a teenager are that they are willing to work, familiar with technology, and work significantly cheaper than a freelance writer. A good wage is about $4-5 per blog post, depending on the length and quality of the work.

Rethink Your Topic

If you can’t find the time to write on your blog, is it because you truly don’t have time or is it because the topic is boring? Although topics like financial and medical blogs will make more money, they don’t do you any good if they aren’t updated frequently. If your topic is too boring to write articles for, it may be time to make a blog about something you are actually interested in.

Sell Your Blog

If you don’t go with any of the options listed above, I would suggest selling your blog altogether. I first started blogging in 2010 and started a technology blog on Blogger. It was the first blog I had ever started and its beginning days were quite lame… Posts were short, my blog name and domain were terrible, and I didn’t really understand SEO. After about two years of practice, I moved the blog over to a self-hosted WordPress server. I realized that with the crappy posts from my beginning days and my domain name not being so great, that I should start a brand new blog. I was able to get $800 for the blog on the Flippa Marketplace for what I like to call my “sandbox blog.”

If you are unhappy with your current topic and your blog is in a format that you can sell and transfer to somebody else, I say list it on Flippa and see what you get for it. Then, use those profits to fund a blog you are actually interested in. For example, after I sold my first blog for $800, I invested $200 of that into finding a good, aged domain name that will work perfectly for the blog I had in mind.

Start Tips Blog: Make random post blogspot

- Blog / Add a Gadget
- Copy and paste this code

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

<div id="random-posts"></div>
<script type="text/javascript">
function getRandomPosts(json) {
var maxEntries = 10;
var numPosts = json.feed.openSearch$totalResults.$t;
var indexPosts = new Array();
for (var i = 0; i < numPosts; ++i) {
indexPosts[i] = i;
}
indexPosts.sort(function() {return 0.5 - Math.random()});
if (maxEntries > numPosts) {
maxEntries = numPosts;
}
var container = document.getElementById('random-posts');
var ul = document.createElement('ul');
for (i = 0; i < maxEntries; ++i) {
var entry = json.feed.entry[indexPosts[i]];
var li = document.createElement('li');
var a = document.createElement('a');
a.title = entry.title.$t;
for (var j = 0; j < entry.link.length; ++j) {
if (entry.link[j].rel == 'alternate') {
a.href = entry.link[j].href;
break;
}
}
a.appendChild(document.createTextNode(entry.title.$t));
li.appendChild(a);
ul.appendChild(li);
}
container.appendChild(ul);
}
</script>
<script src="/feeds/posts/summary?alt=json-in-script&callback=getRandomPosts&max-results=999999" type="text/javascript"></script>

------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Enjoy :)

9 Reasons Why I AM An Amazon Affiliate

John Chow today posted a post outlining why he’s not an Amazon Affiliate. It’s a good post in that it gives an insight into his approach to affiliate marketing. The best point John alludes to is that Amazon doesn’t ‘fit’ with his blog. He makes more from other better targeted affiliate programs than Amazon.
However the Amazon Associates Program is well worth considering for some bloggers. I use it and this month it’ll earn me over $2500 USD – not my biggest income stream, but not the ‘pennies and dimes’ that some say it has the potential to earn.
To bring a little balance to the debate over the Amazon Affiliate program I thought I’d give a few reasons that I am an Amazon Affiliate: 1. Amazon is a trusted Brand – I surveyed some of my readers a year back and asked them to give me a list of online stores that they had made purchases from in the last 12 months. Amazon came up number 1 as the most popular shopping destination mentioned. Readers know Amazon and are familiar with it – they trust it and do spend significant money there.
2. Commissions – John writes that he’s not satisfied with a 4% commission. He’s right in some ways, 4% isn’t that much when you’re selling a $10 book – however when you’re selling a Get a Price on the $5000 Camera or a $25,000 Tractor (I know someone who does quite well out of ride on mowers and tractors) it certainly adds up. Not only that, the 4% rate that John talks about is the base rate. Unfortunately it is as high as it goes on consumer electronics – however on most other products there is a sliding scale where the more you sell the higher your commission goes to. Sell more than 6 items in a month and your commission goes to 6% – sell over 630 and you’re up to 8% (the rate I’m on). The 4-Hour work Week that John uses as an example earned me around $1 a book. Still not a lot – but I did sell 100 or so of them (after my interview with it’s author) which not only earned me $100 but also helped push the numbers of sales up for the month, moving me into the next earning bracket.
3. People Buy More than One Item – the great thing about Amazon is that you don’t just earn a commission on the product that you people to, but anything that they buy once they’re at Amazon. I did an experiment earlier in the year where I published a review of a digital photography book on my blog and placed a tracking code in the link to see how much the review earned me specifically. What I found was that the product in the review did quite well – but the sales of other products that people made once they got to Amazon was actually much greater than the sales of the actual book. People went on to buy all manner of products (other books, electronics, cosmetics etc) – I earned a commission on each one of them – now that’s passive income. You earn a commission on anything that a person buys within 24 hours of you sending them to Amazon.
4. Easily Integrated – There are more and more plugins and tools that have Amazon Affiliate integration built into them to help you easily place links in your blog posts. I use ecto for Mac which has a tool that searches for products and links them in in just a couple of clicks. WP has plugins also. The affiliate links already mentioned in this post took seconds to integrate in.
5. Payment Options – Amazon pays their affiliates in a number of ways. One of the things that I like is that they give you the option to be paid in products instead of cash. I don’t do this every month (I couldn’t spend that $20,000+ a year at Amazon… well maybe I could) but occasionally do and use it as prizes for blog readers. I recently offered DPS readers $500 of Amazon products in a forum signup competition. The prize is paid for out of my affiliate earnings.
6. Small Payments Add Up – In my early days of making money from blogs I didn’t have the luxury of picking and choosing my income streams as much as I (and other full time bloggers) now do. I needed to earn money somewhere and even the small amounts that Amazon brought in were better than nothing. Over time these payments began to add up. In the early days I didn’t even earn enough for a minimum payment amount and had to wait a few months before they’d pay me – but those pay outs were milestones that I celebrated. If I’d not gone with Amazon because they didn’t earn me a lot I might not have gone with any ad networks or affiliate programs – sometimes you have to take what you can get.
7. It’s an Investment that Matures Over Time – My approach with Amazon is to treat it a little like a savings account or an investment that you put a little into each week and which matures in it’s earnings over time. What do I mean by this? I add links to Amazon over time and find that in doing so I’m creating more and more doorways into the Amazon store. Each time I do I increase the chances of sending someone to Amazon and seeing returns on those visits.
8. The Holidays are Boom Time – While I’m really happy with the way my Amazon Affiliate income is growing ($2500 a month is so far beyond what I’d ever expected from it in the early days) it’s worth noting that things really fire up in the lead up to Christmas and the holiday season. Over the last few years I’ve noticed significant jumps in Amazon earnings in December (as much as 100%). The key is to plan ahead (make sure your links are all up to date a couple of months out) and run a few Christmas specific posts in the lead up to the Holiday rush (start to prepare as early as October/November).
9. Wide Array of Products What initially attracted me to using Amazon’s Affiliate program was the breadth of products that they had in their system. This is a great thing if you’re niche is narrow or quite obscure as many bloggers find it difficult to find affiliate programs to match their blog’s focus. Blogs like John’s and mine here at ProBlogger do have an array of options for affiliate programs (which is why I don’t use it a lot on this blog and make most of my earnings from Amazon from product related blogs) but many bloggers don’t have the luxury of being able to choose high paying affiliate programs because they simply don’t relate to our topics. Amazon then becomes one of the more attractive options.
So is the Amazon Affiliate Program for you? I can’t answer that question for everyone – I won’t pretend that it works brilliantly on every blog but I know quite a few bloggers making significant earnings each month from the program. Blogs with a strong product focus can do quite well through the program if links to Amazon are well integrated into posts (see some of the links below for tips). I would advise moderation in using the program – don’t place them in every post you write unless they are relevant. Links placed in genuinely helpful reviews do better than links and banners in sidebars. The best way to see if it converts is to give it a go.

5 Ways Twitter is Better Than Google+

As soon as Google+ was out I somehow managed to beseech an invite. After weeks of using Google+ I realized Google+ has as many cons as the pros. Similar to falling in love with a guy I fell in love with Google+ at first sight but it took me second and third glance to know the negatives of the Big G’s latest kid.

Thank goodness that I didn’t dump my ex (Twitter). Yeah even before launch of Google+ I was more attached towards Twitter than Facebook. This ultimately led me to utilize Twitter to the maximum. Now after using Google+ for a while now I found a few things that thwart the Twitter user in me.
By the way, if you have not yet played around fully with Google plus, this tutorial on using Google+ could be of help to you. Now let’s dive in.
God of search! What happened? The search option in Google+ is none other than a friend finder (amazing to know that Google is giving priority to humans). Friend finder is cool but if we want to find a post by a person in Google+ then we need to go to the traditional Google search engine. However Twitter has got an awe-inspiring search which is both amenable as well as ideal.
Of course Google may enhance Google+ to have advanced search options in the near feature but as of now search in Google+ is too ironic.
5000 friends only? That makesG+ equal to Facebook As in Facebook Google+ also limits your contacts to 5000. Unlike Twitter which neither limits the number of followers nor the ones you follow. Facebook has fan pages as a relief to people who have more than 5000 contacts.
What does G+ have? Google+ doesn’t restrict the number of people who follow your posts (that’s a good news) but if you are the one accustomed to have thousands of followers or the one who follow thousands of people in twitter this feature (restricting to 5000 contacts) of Google+ is a glitch.
It would be nice if number of persons per circle is restricted to some 1000 or 5000 but this may not secure Google+ users from spammers (the reason why facebook and Google+ restricts the contacts to certain number). Hope Google+ will come up with a cool plan to clear this issue.
More like Facebook Since Google+ was launched in an attempt to overpower the leading social network Facebook the former has adapted certain features blindly from the latter. Similar to Facebook Google+ is not scannable. Yeah, as Google+ doesn’t have a character limit for statuses and posts the contents are not crisp and clear. For a hardcore Twitter user like me (familiarized with reading precise and concise posts) the Google+ seems to be a somewhat ambiguous.
With 24 hours not being enough for a lot of people in the world Twitter made a culture of conveying your thoughts short and sweet but Google+ is again brought lengthy posts which are inconvenient in comparison with Twitter.
Big Boss: Befriend others It was expedient for us to publish our posts, thoughts, links, etc. in both Facebook and Twitter with a single click on publish (thanks to the compatibility between these two social networks). Even certain social network like Tumblr too has this option but Big G is all alone and it doesn’t seem to befriend anyone. I frequently see similar posts posted separately in Twitter and Google+ or Facebook and Google+ (even I do that most of the times). This is very much time-consuming.
Business environment, Information centre – I don’t find one. Unlike twitter which has all leading brands in it or the facebook which has fan pages for almost every odd product on this Earth Google+ doesn’t seem to be supporting business. Even after days of launching Twitter it acted as a wondrous platform for business, promoting, advertising, etc but G+ is not that shrewd when it comes to business.
Of course Google+ lovers may claim that the network is new and would take time to improve this. In such a case let’s wait and watch what enhancements are made to it.
MY VERDICT ABOUT GOOGLE+ The new kid of Google is super cool with incredible features like circles, gorgeous UI, hangouts, etc but when compared with Twitter which is super hot (always) Google+ gets diminished in some aspects. What to do, after all people always fall for hot things.
Have you experienced more ways in which Twitter is better than G+? Share them through comments.
Jane writes about Blogging Tips, Relationships and Self Improvement at her blog Find All Answers. She also writes for promoting Bistro MD and Diet to go coupons since she is part of the team at Coupon Triumph. Here are two cool coupons for you: bistromd promo code, diettogo coupon

Where SEO is at in 2012

Each year brings with it lots of new surprises in terms of alterations, updates & improvements in the internet technology. SEO or Search Engine Optimization techniques are also rumored to experience quite a few changes in this year.


· Social Media is expected to play a very important role for SEO in 2012. Google has already announced the fact that they consider websites that use social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace etc. for posing links & videos to promote their websites.
· Images & Video links as well as essential transcriptions for keyword purposes would carry a lot more weightage.
· It is advised to steer clear of inadequate, weak & irrelevant web-links as they can decrease the overall weightage of your webpage on the internet. A number of SEO experts stress on including web-links of informative articles as being one of the most powerful tools for a higher Search Engine Ranking. It is also predicted that this year many SEO professionals are looking forward to experiment by associating their client’s WebPages with high-page rank links.
· Hi-Tech gadgets have made the keyword search much more complex than it was earlier. With the advent of advanced versions of smart phones and android gadgets, it is now possible for people to use the unique feature of ‘Speak to Search’ on a number of cell phones. This is precisely the reason why keywords that are used within the content posted on a website have to be in the form of short phrases & up to the mark. SEO in 2012 is also expected to emphasize decreased volumes in keyword framing.

The most important SEO resolutions for the year 2012
Simple and Direct content has to be reflected on your webpage. No matter what product or service you are promoting through your website, it is important to ensure that the subject matter on each page is extremely informative to the reader & makes use of simple keywords that are frequently researched by most internet users.
Incorporate quality in-bound links and associate with practical/relevant outbound links. Doing so would not only increase the online visibility of your webpage but also enhance the ranking of your website on the net. Avoid using too many irrelevant inbound/outbound links as they can easily damage the reputation of your website. By associating your website through links with superior-quality & high ranked WebPages, you can easily retain a good ranking for a long time to come.
Keep your website user-friendly and stay accessible at all times. One of the main benefits of being a website which is recognized by most Search Engines is that it increases the popularity, web traffic and online visibility of your webpage. In order to maintain a constant connection with your customers it is crucial to ensure that your contact page is always updated with recent changes, if any. An efficient online accessibility will never let you lose important leads & make it easier to stay in touch with the buyers.
Be aware of changing SEO trends at all times. This will help you in renewing your SEO strategies from time to time for the betterment of your website. While doing so, always ensure to stick with quality content and ignore cheap tricks.

14 Ways To Promote Your Facebook Page

Facebook has become an important communications and marketing channel for many small businesses, many of whom could benefit from having more visitors to their pages.
Unfortunately the average small business operator has neither the time nor the resources to promote Facebook pages like big business can but there are several simple things one can do to get more visitors.
Include a link to your Facebook page in your business and personal email signatures.
If you send out email newsletters to clients you should include a link to your page.
Add a Facebook link to your website’s home page and contact page and add Facebook Like buttons to your article or blog pages. Do this also for any blogs you run on other platforms like blogger.
Even printed promotional material like brochures and flyers can include a mention of your FB page.
Mention your page in any shop or vehicle signage you might have, add it to your business cards.
If you have personal profiles at sites like Linkedin or Hubpages include a link to your Facebook page.
When commenting on blogs or in online forums try linking to your page instead of your website.
Leverage your existing contacts – ask personal friends and colleagues to like the page so their friends get to hear about it. Ask existing likers to share your posts with their friends.
Offer incentives like free reports or discounts to page likers, everyone loves a freebie.
Consider running a competition and ask your likers to share with their friends. Make sure you comply with Facebook’s rules on competitions.
Use a landing page to ask new visitors to hit the like button. Tell them what benefits they will receive and most first-time visitors will become likers.
Go and find good relevant discussions on other Facebook pages while logged on in “use Facebook as Page” mode. Hit the like button for those pages then add to those discussions meaningfully, don’t spam. Now everyone who previously liked or commented on that post will receive a notification about your post, a great way to get noticed!
Mention other Facebook pages in your posts and tag them so the post appears on their page as well as your own. Not all pages allow it but many do.
Use Facebook advertising to promote your page to whatever demographic you like. You can target who sees your ads by age, gender, interest, location and many other ways.
Post regularly to your page but make it interesting so as to engage users, the more they interact with your page the more their friends will get to see your page mentioned.

Making Money Online with DonkeyMails

What is DonkeyMails?

DonkeyMails is a GPT site featuring multiple ways of making money. It includes - Paid to Click, Paid to Sign Up, Paid to Review, Paid to Promote, Paid to Read, and many more..
Here's information about each one.
1. Paid to Click - This feature is accessed through the link "Paid2Click" on the site's menu. You will be prompt with a list of banners to click, along with the amount you can earn from clicking each ad. Rates for Paid to Click include $0.01, $0.005, and $0.0025 per ad.
2. Paid to Sign Up - To access this service, click on "Paid2SignUp" on the site menu. There are many offers with instructions listed in order from highest paying to lowest paying. Most of the offers pay approximately $0.10.
3. Paid to Review - It's accessed through the link "Get Paid to Review" on the site menu. You will be prompt with a list of websites along with instructions and a text box. Read the instructions and enter whatever they tell you to enter in the text box. The average pay for this service is $0.05.
4. Paid to Promote - This is located in the link "Paid to Promote". There you will see 2 links for you to promote - one that earns you credit (which can be converted to money) and one that earns you points (used for advertising your own website). For every 1000 unique views your link gets, you will receive $0.50 or 2000 points.
5. Paid to Read - This is one of the more popular features of the website due to its convenience. Basically, this service is the same as the Pay to Click part of the website, except that the ads are emailed to you directly. Depending on what interests you selected on your profile, DonkeyMails will send out the ads accordingly.
Payment Information
Payments are sent out every 2 weeks. You can cash out using either PayPal, AlertPay, or LibertyReserve.
How much do I need to cash out?
For PayPal and AlertPay, you need a minimum of $1.00. However, for LibertyReserve you only need to have earned $0.01.
Referral Benefits
What makes DonkeyMails worthwhile, is its referral system. To be honest, you won't be making a lot of money regardless of how dedicated you are, with only yourself clicking on advertisements. You need referrals as well. DonkeyMails referral system allows for 5 levels of referral commissions to be earned. The percentages for each level are as followed:
1st Level (Direct referral) - 10% 2nd Level (Referral's referral) - 5% 3rd Level (Referral's referral's referral) - 3% 4th Level (...so forth) - 2% 5th Level - 1%
As you can see, the extensive referral system allows for an extremely high earning potential. This is why DonkeyMails is one of the best PTC sites around. With some effort into getting referrals you will be generating some nice profits in time.
Proof of Payment

Seeing as how this may seem too good to be true, here is a payment proof from one of the members of the website.
With some work you can be earning a lot more than this. Also, they have a list of paid members on the DonkeyMails website: http://www.donkeymails.com/pages/beenpaid.php Conclusion
DonkeyMails is overall an incredible and reliable site that can earn you a lot of extra money. Give it a try. You won't regret it. Sign up here

5 Ways To Improve Your Adsense Earnings

5 Ways To Improve Your Adsense Earnings If webmasters want to monetize their websites, the great way to do it is through Adsense. There are lots of webmasters struggling hard to earn some good money a day through their sites. But then some of the “geniuses” of them are enjoying hundreds of dollars a day from Adsense ads on their websites. What makes these webmasters different from the other kind is that they are different and they think out of the box. The ones who have been there and done it have quite some useful tips to help those who would want to venture into this field. Some of these tips have boosted quite a lot of earnings in the past and is continuously doing so.
Here are some 5 proven ways on how best to improve your Adsense earnings.
1. Concentrating on one format of Adsense ad. The one format that worked well for the majority is the Large Rectangle (336X280). This same format have the tendency to result in higher CTR, or the click-through rates. Why choose this format out of the many you can use? Basically because the ads will look like normal web links, and people, being used to clicking on them, click these types of links. They may or may not know they are clicking on your Adsense but as long as there are clicks, then it will all be for your advantage.
2. Create a custom palette for your ads. Choose a color that will go well with the background of your site. If your site has a white background, try to use white as the color of your ad border and background. The idea to patterning the colors is to make the Adsense look like it is part of the web pages. Again, This will result to more clicks from people visiting your site.
3. Remove the Adsense from the bottom pages of your site and put them at the top. Do not try to hide your Adsense. Put them in the place where people can see them quickly. You will be amazed how the difference between Adsense locations can make when you see your earnings.

4. Maintain links to relevant websites. If you think some sites are better off than the others, put your ads there and try to maintaining and managing them. If there is already lots of Adsense put into that certain site, put yours on top of all of them. That way visitor will see your ads first upon browsing into that site.
5. Try to automate the insertion of your Adsense code into the webpages using SSI (or server side included). Ask your web administrator if your server supports SSI or not. How do you do it? Just save your Adsense code in a text file, save it as “adsense text”, and upload it to the root directory of the web server. Then using SSI, call the code on other pages. This tip is a time saver especially for those who are using automatic page generators to generate pages on their website.
These are some of the tips that have worked well for some who want to generate hundreds and even thousands on their websites. It is important to know though that ads are displayed because it fits the interest of the people viewing them. So focusing on a specific topic should be your primary purpose because the displays will be especially targeted on a topic that persons will be viewing already.
Note also that there are many other Adsense sharing the same topic as you. It is best to think of making a good ad that will be somewhat different and unique than the ones already done. Every clickthrough that visitors make is a point for you so make every click count by making your Adsense something that people will definitely click on.
Tips given by those who have boosted their earnings are just guidelines they want to share with others. If they have somehow worked wonders to some, maybe it can work wonders for you too. Try them out into your ads and see the result it will bring.
If others have done it, there is nothing wrong trying it out for yourself.