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Tracking Stats on Your Blog Part I

Luis Sandoval — Thu, 07 May 2009 00:49:46 +0000

I wanted to share a basic topic with all of our readers that I think is sometimes overlooked, or perhaps is misunderstood by those new to the medium. In my last post I discussed how more and more people are turning to blogging as a career field. Some are finding ways to become bloggers for their companies, or they are independently finding ways to profit off the medium. In either case, money is the fundamental item we need in order to purchase goods and services, but nothing matters if you’re not tracking your stats.

For a lot of you new to blogging, perhaps you’ve heard of tracking statistics, perhaps you’re teaching yourself how to monitor your site, but suffice to say, it’s a clear cut benefit if you plan to make money on your site. This is the first of a series of posts that will look into ways bloggers can track visitors, clicks, and other vital information on their own sites in order to best plan their money making methods. There’s nothing wrong with financially gaining for your efforts, but never forget content is king, and for content to be king, you must first develop trust with your readers. But that is another post…

Tracking Stats is Fundamental

Inspired by a post I read on Mashable, I wanted to really share some key points of info with regards to planning how you will make money, and increasing your profits, all by keeping track of the vital statistics of your site. There are numerous ways, software packages, freeware, and site specific methods, and my hope is that after this series is done, you’ve got all the tools at your disposal and can make a more apt decision balancing your needs and your site’s target market.

What I’d like to target first are the analytical software packages that exist to assist those that are really looking at going in-depth with their analytics monitoring. I will delve into a few of my favorites, and then list other options that are available for you. Providing you this information will be key when making any decision, and empowering is what I want to make sure I do for each and every reader, especially on a topic as fundamental as this.

I. Google Analytics
By now everyone on the planet has heard of Google. With as many online tools as they offer, it’s no surprise that they also offer site tracking utilities that work very well with their other offerings such as AdWords. The utility allows for tracking of extensive information that would be vital to establishing which pages to market on, how, why, and where your traffic is coming in from. I personally use this tool for all of my sites, and more importantly have the stats printed out weekly in order to review how traffic is using my site, and viewing my content. The real big downside to this option is that it’s not live data. The data you review can be as old as several hours, so this would not be sufficient if you are seeking live, updated information. The process to sign up is fairly easy and provides simple navigation to get to where you want.

II. Clicky
I love Clicky, and I love what it offers and the ease of use it has established. Clicky is great if you are constantly on the go as well because it offers a mobile interface, via iPhone, that keeps you up to date with all the stats in real time, live, and up to date. Unliked Google Analytics, what you see is what is happening. The utility shows you what every person that has come to your site has done, and how they’ve interacted on your page. This might be a little more information than perhaps you are looking for, but for those that stake their livelihood on their site might be persuaded to take an active part in all it has to offer.

Clicky does offer a tiered service that starts off with a free account. The free account has its limitations, but starting out, you get a free 21-day trail of the Pro Account, to show you what you can get if you pay into the tierd services. Prices range from $9.99 to $49.99 a month, but undoubtedly one of the leaders in their field for what they do. They even go with a comparison chart of their services versus their competition. Sites such as Wine Library TV, Mashable, and Smashing Magazine all use their service, why not you?

III. Yahoo Web Analytics
Here’s another familiar face in the bunch, Yahoo. It’s almost as if the world is divided into two users, those that love Google, and those that are die-hard fans of Yahoo. No doubt Yahoo has expanded its list of services to remain competitive in the market, and despite struggles at the management level, the software it’s offering has been solid. With its version of web analytics, the dashboard is customizable and very easy to manage, along with live and up to date information. It proposes that the use of their software makes it easy for marketers to align their campaigns with the user’s search and reading habits. The strong points seem to be the demographic and behavioral reports that can be monitored with Yahoo. Definitely worth a look!

IV. Woopra
Woopra is a real winner with a lot of people, and honestly it slowly starting to become my favorite of the packages offered in this list. For starters the interface is, simply put, just beautiful. It’s comforting to browse the interface and the many segments of information it can track for you. Like other packages it offers real time tracking, and it also offers you the ability to see visitor information, track their clicks, and monitor their movements across your site. What l love most about Woopra is the extras it has added into the package to truly make your tracking interactive. For starters it offers click to chat sessions so that you can chat with visitors on your site as they arrive. It’s a two way communication and the webmaster can decide how they want to set it up. It can either be click-able by the visitor to initiate chat, or initiated by the webmaster to connect with the visitor. Secondly it also allows you to track loyal visitors to your site by specifically targeting them for tracking, monitoring how often and what they comment on, what they click, and all of this offers a better view of your most loyal fans and what works and what does not.

These are just four of top analytical tools in my book. There are many other analytical software packages you can use for your site, and here is the list of 20 for you to review. Pick the ones that work best for you.

Photo Credit Don Solo

Post Written by Luis Sandoval. He is a media strategist for Advantj Media, and writer on social media and technology on his blog The Daily Slackr.

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30 Proven Ways to Monetize Your Blog Part I

Luis Sandoval — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 15:40:52 +0000

2009 is rapidly approaching! A new year is ahead and a great many of us bloggers are looking for unique revenue streams to add a little extra income to their current finances, or create a lifestyle where blogging can support all of your needs.

This series of posts is going to feed you some amazing information for you to digest over the next week or so. My hope is that thru this information, you can explore these avenues further, and perhaps find ways to achieve your goals.

1. PPC Advertising Methods

Google AdSense is the most popular example of this monetizing methods. The concept is for a user to sign up on a site and then include snippets of data on your site to monitor. Your results and the amount of money you make through this method is solely depended on two things, the first is the traffic that goes through your site, and secondly the niche that you’ve established yourself in.

2. CPM Advertising Networks

CPM is based on the number of page views your site receives. CPM (Cost Per Mille) is based on every 1,000 impressions your site receives. Rates will vary depending on the network you choose to align yourself with. The more impressions you receive, the more money you make; anything from as low as $.10 to as high as $10 is what you will find across the networks.

3. Banner Advertising

This method can be one of the most lucrative methods, again dependent upon the size of your audience, and the number of advertisers that you can attract. Using the site you’ve created, you decide what space you’re willing to offer up, and then attract quality advertisers to that spot. You have a direct line to the advertises which leaves you not having to depend on a middle man.

4. Text Link Advertising

Text Linking is a pretty straight forward method. Having links within your site that are not intrusive, but are available to market different items to your readers. The word will look like a hyperlink which will take you to a site of the advertisers choice, but it’s not so blatant that it forces users to click, so the opt in/out is beneficial. There are down sides to Text Link Advertising so make sure you read the links below as you research these methods.

5. Affiliate Marketing

Very popular amongst the vast majority of online marketers, where a merchant will allow others to sell the product either directly or indirectly for a commission. Whatever tools you use to increase sales, you are bound to make money and increase your exposure.

6. Money Making Widgets

These are basically what has been mentioned above in the last four listings, except the concept is contained within a widget making it easier for site owners to plug it into their site and hit the ground running.

7. Sponsored Reviews

The idea for this method is to charge for a review of a product or service that is offered. This can get sticky for several reasons. For starters your site must lend itself to this type of monetization method, a review will look odd if the site does not fit the post, secondly the review may not be favorable if the product or service is not good. You don’t want to give off the impression that your “positive” review can be paid for, so becareful with this one.

8. Advertising via RSS

RSS Feeds are the new hot trend. Everyone is receiving information through their feeds, and aggregators are becoming increasingly popular as users tap into their collective gatherings for all the information they seek. Attaching advertising to the RSS is a new practice with very few options, but it’s always worth a try!

9. Content Sponsors

If you have specific areas of your site that are highly specialized, or perhaps you create original online content for your site like a podcast or vlog, you can always seek sponsors for these. Depending on your topic, there are plenty of sponsors out there looking for the right exposure.

10. Premium Content

Many sites offer premium content on their sites; basically content that users will pay for in order to get more in depth knowledge or one-on-one expertise. Premium content is created and controlled by you, and if you are able to establish yourself as an expert and monetize your efforts, the sky is the limit for your endeavors.

Take a look at what Internet Business Mastery has done with their site.

These are just a few of the examples, as we go throughout the week we’ll discuss the rest of the methods in Part II and Part III. Digest these ideas and plan your attack for 2009!

Luis Sandoval is a media professional and consultant who shares his insights on social media and technology on his blog The Daily Slackr.

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Free Website For Your Blog at HyperWebEnable.com

Stephen Lee — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 04:50:15 +0000

HyperWebEnable.com is the next generation blogging service provider. It provides bloggers with a free website name as opposed to a sub domain name off the service provider’s main site.

This is how hyperwebenable.com distinguishes itself as a unique and FREE blogging service by providing bloggers with a complete web domain(yoursitename.com) compared to other service providers allowing only sub domain names(yoursitename.blogspot.com), and charging extra for site name, space and hosting. In addition, if you need help getting started, Hyperwebenable.com will help you build your blog or website through a quick and easy site building process. Also, gone are the days of forced ad hostings, bloggers are free to place their own ads on their own blog.

Here are the main benefits that comes with your free account at Hyperwebenable:

	1. Free website of your choice (yoursitename.com)
	2. Free Email service for your blog
	3. Free Multi flavored blogs for your blog like (tech.yoursite.com, movies.yoursite.com and more)
	4. Free add on services for your blog like Forum,CMS, image hosting and more.
	5. Unlimited bandwidth.
	6. Free domain name, hosting and renewal.
	7. Free Tools and tips to improve your site rank and traffic.
	8. Blogger earn money by placing their own ads on their own blog.

I encourage bloggers to take advantage of this great opportunity by visiting Hyperwebenable and get a free account now – registration is FREE !

So what are you waiting for ? Start building an identity and brand name for your blog now !

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10 Best Ways to Promote Your Blog, Part I

Luis Sandoval — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 18:24:42 +0000

Driving traffic to your blog is the entire reason why you started in the first place. You began writing with the intention of sharing your thoughts with the world, and perhaps even provide assistance, guidance, or information to those that would come across your well spent efforts.

Today I will share with you the 10 best ways I have come across to expose your blog to a wide variety of readers, and possibly even share your thoughts beyond those in your network.

Commenting

This is an easy one, and perhaps something you already do being that you are probably online reading more than anything else. People who write want to interact more than anything else. Having someone leave commentary on their work provides them another level of interaction with their readers.

Leaving comments allow you to express yourself at one level, but also allows you to leave your name, your website address, and perhaps the title of your last blog post. Now this will vary from blog to blog depending on their commenting system, but it’s worth the effort. Don’t be surprised to see the writer the blog you visited on your site at some point, and if your commentary was worthwhile, perhaps some of the readers will make their over as well.

Link Love

Don’t be afraid to give credit where credit is due. If you’re expanding on an idea that you came across, share where you got the original idea. Providing links to businesses, other bloggers, person’s of interest are all useful and will provide you some benefits in return. It shows that you are aware of others in the blogosphere and that you’re willing to share within the community. By making your readers aware of another site or blogger, they in turn might do the same for you for their readership. It’s not necessarily a guaranteed solution, but it’s good practice as a blogger.

Guest Post

I spoke about guest posting in another post about expertise, but it also allows you to extend the influence of your brand. You may be writing for another person’s blog, but do not doubt that the owner of that blog will promote you with either an announcement at the beginning of the post or at the end. This gives reader the opportunity to see what you’ve done on your own site and perhaps give you some permanent readers.

Social Networks

I have found this to be the most useful of all the tools. Now it’s not appropriate or an accepted practice to simply bombard your blog postings, or advertise your site on a network continuously. You will become an annoyance and probably get blocked by other users. You’ve done two negative things to yourself, you’re not getting exposure on the network and you’re creating a bad name for yourself.

A common ratio to follow is 70% interaction 30% pimp. Thirty percent of the time that you interact online can be the time that you pimp your site, your postings, or your business. On sites like Twitter and FriendFeed you can reach hundreds if not thousands, especially depending on the size of your network. On Facebook you can set up entire Facebook Pages to promote what you do and build a community (fanbase) around what you do.

Ning is also another site that allows you to create a community, and if you look at truly spending the time to interact with the community off your site, then perhaps Ning is a good way for you to cross promote what you do.

Blog Networks

I have not had much success with blog networks, but that’s not to say that you won’t. I belong to a few such as Blog Catalog, but I find too much “spamming” promotion going on and not enough community building. Bloggers simply blast what they do and what they want you to read and quite frankly it turns me off. Rather then build a community of liked minded bloggers, blogging networks can by tricky, and perhaps even selfish, but dig enough and you might find gold.

Blog Networks also allow you to create badges that you can place on your site that will help to share traffic within the network. This can be useful in building a community tied to a specific niche, or looking for your site specifically. If you can find the right group of solid people, they can help you grow, and you help them grow in return.

Well that sums up the first part of a two part series on the 10 best ways to promote your blog. Give these a try and let us know how it has impacted your site. By working together as a blogging community I am sure we can help each other with advice and guidance on some of these issues.

If you would like to receive free updates on future posts about niche blogging, please subscribe to Bloggin-Ads’s blog feed.

Continue with the second part here

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Guide to Making Money on the Internet by Selling Your Own Information Product

lkcheng — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 03:03:02 +0000

The Internet has become a great source of Information. Billion of people use it to find the information they want. But, they aren’t always obtaining what they want because some valuable information isn’t available free on the Internet. They will have to pay money to get it. Since these people desperately need the information, they will be more than willing to pay the seller who can provide them the info.

So, if you have deep knowledge on a particular field, then you may sell the knowledge on the Internet for profit.

With the valuable knowledge you have in your mind, you can turn this knowledge into your information product and sell it to a target market. A quality info product will keep on making money for you. There are several types of information products and the types that are currently selling well are e-books, e-courses, reports, podcasts and video tutorials.

What Skills You Need?

Your information product is going to be focusing on a topic, so you must possess great knowledge in that topic. You may also need to gather more information from different sources like the Internet, libraries and other sources in order to produce a quality information product that contains loads of valuable information.

It will be even better if your have experience in Internet marketing. Your skill and experience in marketing will enable you to promote your products to your target prospects more effectively.

What Tools You Need?

This will depend on the type of information product you want to create. If you plan to write an e-book, a report or a guide, the MS word program will be suitable and once you have done writing, you can then convert the MS Word file to PDF format. Your e-book needs to be in PDF format to sell online.

For e-courses, you must use an autoresponder program to create them. Other info products like podcast and video are much complicated to produce. You need to have audio recording and editing software to successfully create your podcast. Video is most difficult, you need a digital camera or webcam, editing software and special knowledge.

How to Begin?

First of all, you must decide on a topic for your info product. Think about your expertise, the field that you have most knowledge in or the things that you are passionate about; ask yourself what valuable knowledge you possess. Doing all these will help you make the right decision on what topic to focus on.

A topic usually is very wide. You won’t be able to write everything about the topic. So, you should narrow down it into a specific area and then focus on that specific area.

Subsequently, you need to do some keyword research to find out whether there is a market demand for the product you want to create. This is an important step you must take as you don’t want to create something that no one wants to buy.

Then, you may research your topic and gather all information necessary for your info product creation project. Once you got everything needed, you may start creating it.

When you info product creation project finished and your product is ready for sale, it is time to put up a sale website to market your info product online. You need to have a sale letter on your website to persuade your potential buyers. It is not suggested that you write the sale letter by yourself because you don’t have the experience and skill in this field. It is better to leave the job to a copywriter.

Hiring a copywriter will cost you money but it is worth it because the copywriter can write sale content in a way that make your product so desirable that anyone would want to buy it.

Your information product should have an e-cover or a product image. So, you will also need to hire a graphic designer to create one for you.

People often like to receive more when it comes to purchasing information product. Don’t just sell your info product alone. Your info product should accompany with several bonus products. Add in as many bonuses as you can. This will make your offer more compelling.

When you website is ready, you can start several ad campaigns to promote your product to your target prospects. You are going to need to put in a great deal of effort and time in marketing and promotion in order to generate sales and profit.

This post was written by Alan Liew. Alan is the blogger of Money Maker Info. If you are interested to learn how to make money online, visit his blog at http://moneymakerinfo.blogspot.com.

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Part 3 – How to Choose a Profitable Niche in 3 Simple Steps : Analyze the Profit Potential of your Niche

Stephen Lee — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 22:30:40 +0000

This is the last of a three part series on “How to choose a profitable niche in 3 simple steps”. If you missed the first two parts of the series, you can get the first part here, and the second part here. If you never intended to make any money for your blog, you might still find some information here useful in the event that you’re selling your blog. The information here will help you gauge the market value of your blog.

Step1 – Analyze the Profit Potential of your Niche

For the rest of the folks whose intention is to make money from blogging, it’s important that you examine the possible income streams that your niche topic is capable of generating. In my previous post, I’ve talked about the many ways a blog can make money, but not every method of making money is compatible with every niche topic. For instance, contextual content Ads like Google Adsense and Kontera Context Link while works well with certain niche topics might do very poorly for other niche topics. Some niche topics work well with CPM (Click Per Mile) type Ads which is suitable for high traffic sites, while other niche topics do well with only certain affiliate programs. At this point, you don’t need to be concerned about what method of making money works best for your niche topic. Instead, you need to focus on potential profitability of your niche topic.

There is generally two camps here when comes to sizing up your niche earning potential – Advertising Networks (Adsense, Kontera, Bidvertizer etc) and Affiliate Programs.

Advertising Networks

We are just going to base our discussion on Adsense since it’s the market leader in this segment. In order to help you size up your niche topic earning potential, you need to familiarize yourself with two very easy to use tools – Google Adwords Traffic Estimator and Google’s Adwords Keyword Tool.

Merchants or Advertisers who have products and services to sell on the Web will buy keywords from the Google Adwords program. The “Average CPC (Cost per Click)” is the amount paid by the advertiser when the ad is being clicked on. These ads will show up on Publishers’ websites along with content related to the keywords. Publisher will get a slice of the ad revenue based on the CPC amount and also on how well Google rates your site content. This slice is generally around half the amount of the CPC assuming that Google considered your site to be good.

For the purpose of figuring out the profit potential of your niche topic you should go for something that has a pretty good search volume as indicated by the search volume bar and a CPC of between two to three dollars. If you are going for a niche that has the highest CPC in the marketplace, be prepared for a lot of competition from zillion of webmasters who are already established and competing for the keyword, and it may be a long while before you would get any kind of traction from your efforts at SEO and stuff.

The figure below shows how the different levels of CPC and how it played out for different niches. You would not want to target “Credit Card” because it’s highly competitive, but you might settle for “firm” or “plan”. Likewise, you might want to stay away from very specific niche like “paralysis” because of its low search volume and CPC. However, it might be a different story if you’re an authority site dedicated to paralysis, and have a strong passion for it.

Affiliate Programs

Some niches do phenomenally well with affiliate programs that carry a good variety of their product and services offerings. There are many affiliate programs on the web, some of the bigger ones are Amazon, Clickbank and CJ. Sign up for an account at CJ and check out the main category belonging to your niche and get an idea at the depth of the product and services offerings for your niche. Also look at their network earnings and 3-month EPC to get an idea how well their advertising campaign is performing.

There are of course other avenues you can explore when evaluating the income potential of your niche. Here are some unconventional ways you can get a rough idea on your niche income potential:

	Go to ClickBank and enter the category and sub category relating to your niche. If your niche is popular and people are making money off it by creating digital products like ebooks for it, you will no doubt see a long list. The list is sorted by gravity score in descending order. A high gravity score indicates that the product has been selling in the most recent period the score is taken. So what does this tells you, a high gravity and high payout indicates that the product is in high demand and popular among publishers. A quick Google search on the product’s keyword will confirm that.
	Go to 7 Search Keyword Suggestion Tool and type in your niche. You will get back a list of related searches based on your niche ordered by the search volume in descending order. The bid amounts that are displayed along with each keyword give you a good idea how much advertisers are willing to pay for the keywords. These bidding figures are taken across the advertising industry and are not specific to Adwords. The general rule of the thumb is to look for moderate volume and bid amounts of between two to three dollars.
	Go to Google and type in “PLR My Niche” where “My Niche” is substituted by your niche. PLR is Private Label Rights which is content that you can purchase and distribute on your own sites. If authors are writing PLR content on your niche you can bet that there’s pretty good demand for it out there and publishers are making money off it.
	Go to EzineArticles web site , a premium article directory, and drill down to the category related to your niche and look at the number of articles written for it. A good number of articles indicate that it’s a popular category. Also, looking at the most viewed section for the category and titles of the articles will give some pretty good ideas on the kind of subject matter within your niche that garner the most attention.

Can you think of anymore?

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Part 1 – How to Choose a Profitable Niche in 3 Simple Steps : Analyze Your Interests

Stephen Lee — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 17:26:14 +0000

A blog is unlike any other type of media like a static website or magazine. It has only one main topic and that’s all it talks about. The potential for profits is inherently dependent on the topic and how much you can write about it in a sustainable level of interest. That goes to say that you have to be passionate about the topic and have the energy level to support a prolonged content creation process before your blog can become popular. But, having all these pre-requisites does not guarantee success because there are topics that are not commercially viable. The process of selecting a profitable niche that you are genuinely interested in – as opposed to the myriad of popular topics other people are interested in – is a difficult and arduous task.

Since this blog is about making money, I’m just going to concentrate on giving you the simplest and the bare minimal steps in figuring out how to choose a profitable niche.

Step1 – Analyze Your Interests

Caligraphy – Anyone ?

Take a close look at your interests and what you are all about. What drives you and gives you the utmost satisfaction in doing? It all boils down to one thing – passion. What is the energy level and passion you have for a particular interest? These are important questions to ask yourself because building a successful blog takes considerable time, and blogging will fast become a chore if you are not enjoying what you are doing. In time to come, your readers will be able to detect that you are a fake, and they will leave in droves. There are many blogs on the internet that are in the same niche as yours, why should they spend time on your blog that is so dry and passionless.

Another litmus test you can apply to test your interest level in a topic is to ask yourself this question: Would I still be happily blogging about this topic a year from now? If you can’t picture yourself doing this a year from now, don’t even contemplate on starting a blog on it.

Whatever that you do, do not blog on a topic that other people find popular, and the only reason why you are interested in it is because of its commercial possibilities.

While having a heightened interest in a topic is a pre-requisite for a blog topic, it alone is not enough to build a successful blog. Here is a list of litmus tests that you need to apply to each of your candidate topic of interests, and see which ones come out ahead:

	Popularity – How popular is your topic? If there is no demand for your topic then no matter how interested you are in it, nobody is going to visit you. The quickest way to find out is to do a Google search and see how many results you get back. You can also try Google Insight and plot all your topic interests into one graph, giving you a pictorial view of how each topic fares against one another.
	Growth – You want to go with a niche that is growing not one that is shrinking. Predicting the next big thing people will be searching for seems like a surefire winner, but it’s not an easy thing to do. Be on the lookout everywhere – on the Internet, newspapers, magazines, TV, Radio, conversations with friends. Check out Google Trends for Hot trends.
	Competition – The worst thing you could do to yourself is to get into a topic that is so popular and competitive that it will take you a long time to become a successful blog. Do you have the staying power to withstand the long and arduous journey? I use the WordTracker tool to compare the KEI (Keyword Effective Index) of various keywords for a topic. A KEI is logarithmic scale that ranges from 0 to 10, and is used to weigh and quantify the effectiveness of a keyword. Its usage and interpretation is quite similar in principle to the Richter Scale, commonly used to measure earthquakes. So, the higher the KEI associated with a keyword, the more effective the keyword. The main topic is usually competitive with many web pages competing for it. The more popular topic has over millions of web pages competing for it. While your SEO campaign does not have to target the main keyword, you can probably get a pretty good ranking by targeting the long-tailed ones. With the phenomenal growth of the web over the last decade, the web has become more and more cluttered; it’s uncommon to find any singular keyword that has a very high KEI. But there are still many topics with moderately good KEI that can be monetized. If you are resolved to compete in a niche with a moderate level of competition, check out what your competitors are not doing or not doing it well enough. It is often easier for a new blog to position itself quickly to capture a captive audience for a niche that is not well served by their competition, in doing so they created a blog on a sub-niche of the main topic.
	Content – Do you have sufficient unique content as an author to sustain your blog over a long period of time before you can become a popular blog? The answer to this question lies in whether you have the staying power which is driven by your passion, energy and interest level for the topic. In today’s cluttered Web, you are bound to find other blogs in your niche that can offer you inspiration and content ideas. Analyze the posts that you and your competitors do well in, extend on it, and provide an in-depth coverage of it with new refreshing viewpoints and ideas

By applying the process of elimination, you have probably narrowed down to just a handful of candidate topics that you are interested to blog about. The next step is to take each of these topics and put them through a series of web based tools.

There are a number of free keyword discovery tools on the internet: Trellian’s Keyword Discovery Tool; WordTracker Free Keyword Suggestion Tool.

If you want to narrow down your field in a particular niche, you can use Wikipedia which does a very good job of providing informative articles on a topic that is well interlinked with others. I particularly find the subsections very useful in deciding what categories to go with my blog topics.

At the end of this step, you should arrive at a stage where you have gathered enough background information about a short listed number of topics that you want to concentrate on targeting for your blog which leads you to the next step.

In the second part of the series, I’ll talk about Step 2 – Analyze the Traffic Potential of your Niche.
Then, I’ll conclude the series with Step 3 – Analyze the Profit Potential of your Niche.

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How Exactly Can Blogs Make Money

Stephen Lee — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 23:30:58 +0000

Blogs can make money. Can you believe it? Despite the fact that there may be doubts, the truth is, blogs can really be a definite source of decent income. All you have to do is to monetize it.

Utilize PPC Advertising Networks

You can monetize your blog by selling advertising spaces. PPC means “Pay per click”. This means that you will get paid every time one of your blog visitors “click” the ads posted in your web pages.

These days, the most common form of PPC Advertising that is being utilized by many bloggers is Google AdSense. However, there are many other PPC Networks that you can avail of. Among the most popular networks are Yahoo! Publisher Network (YPN), BidVertiser, Chitika, and Clicksor.

If you want to make use of PPC advertising networks, you will just have to check their websites and sign up. In filling out your agreement forms, you will have to state the niche of your blog, as well as the type of advertisements that you will allow to be posted in your blog site.

After signing up, you will be given a code that you will have to incorporate on your blog’s code set-up. Once all set, the network will post contextual ads on the ad space and you will earn a definite amount of cash every time someone clicks the ads.

In making use of the PPC advertising networks, you will have to take note of the fact that the money that you will earn depends on the web traffic of your blog site. Other than that, some PPC advertising networks will also consider the CTR (click through rate) and the CPC (cost per click). Basically, the CTR depends on ad’s position in your website. The more strategic it is (i.e. blended with the content), the higher the CTR will be. CPC is based on the niche of your blog. Some niche will earn more dollars for every ad click. These include financing, mortgages, education, and banking.

Try CPM Advertising Networks

Just like PPC networks, you will also sell ad space when you make use of CPM advertising networks. However, the amount that you will earn depends on the number of impressions that the ads will generate once they are displayed on your blog site. CPM refers to “Cost per Mille”. “Mille” refers to 1,000 impressions and impressions refer to page views.

The rate for your CPM will be based on the size of your ad and its strategic position in your blog site. In general, you can get a higher CPM rate if you put the advertisements closer to the top of your page or near the content. You will also get a higher CPM rate if you will put bigger ads.

Aside from the size and position of the ad, note that your choice of CPM network will also affect the profitability of your blog. Some networks will offer as much as ten dollars for a thousand impressions while others only offer ten cents. When choosing a CPM network, pick those that have access to many advertisers. However, note that this kind of advertising is more appropriate for websites that generate a lot of page views.

If you want to avail of CPM advertising networks, you ought to check Casale Media, Burst Media, Value Click, Advertising.com, Tribal Fusion, and Right Media

Put Direct Banner Advertisements

Just like PPC and CPM advertising, you will have to sell some ad space. However, this type is much more profitable because you won’t have to worry about middleman commissions. Moreover, you can even determine your own rates.

Once you become an affiliate, you can help your merchant sell their products though the use of various tools. These may be text links that will direct the customers to the merchant’s web pages, banner ads about the products and services, or reviews about the products and services.

Usually, this type of advertising is also called CPA (cost per action) or CPL (cost per lead). To find merchants and affiliate programs, you ought to check affiliate networks or marketplaces. There are many websites which offer this kind of monetization opportunity. Among the most popular affiliate networks that you can check are Commission Junction, ClickBank, Azoogle Ads, and Link Share.

Practice Affiliate Marketing

If you don’t want to sell your advertising space, try affiliate marketing. As the name implies, you will have to engage in “marketing”. In affiliate marketing, you have to be an affiliate. You need to find merchants who are willing to let “affiliates” sell their products and services, in either direct or indirect manner. Your earnings will be based on commissions.

Note that updating your blog on a daily basis will not only make it more interesting and engaging to readers. Instead, it will also provide you with a chance to put in new content that attracts search engine spiders. Therefore, updating your blog daily also makes your blog a lot more appealing to major search engines.

If you cannot update your blog everyday for whatever reason, try updating your blog two or three times a week. The key point here is regularity. Many bloggers started out updating their blog everyday for a week or two, and then it slowly tappers off after their initial excitement wears off. Decide on a frequency of update from the get go, and stick to it. Always increase your frequency of updates and not decrease it. The biggest dis-service you can do to your blog is not updating at all, a blog with no updates is a dead blog.

Incorporate Private Forums

If you don’t want to advertise or market, then try to incorporate private forums. This monetization process requires you to create a private forum where aspiring members will have to pay so they can join the forum. Among the pioneers of this monetization method is SEO Blackhat and Performancing.

If you want to make use of this monetization technique, you will just have to come up with a specific niche that will be very appealing to readers. You can ask your readers to pay a lifetime membership fee or a recurring fee that should be paid monthly or annually.

The most effective type of private forums that you can come up with are those that offer tips, secret techniques, downloadable files, downloadable software, web design templates, and other online tools that can be very useful. Take note of the fact that you can entice more readers if you can provide a lot of freebies and opportunities that they may find valuable.

If you want to incorporate a private forum on your blog site, try using the most popular forum software that is available these days like: vBulletin, Simple Machines Forum, phpBB, and Vanilla.

How to Become A Successful Niche Blogger

Stephen Lee — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 18:50:54 +0000

Niche Bloggers are bloggers that concentrate on blogging about a particular subsection of a general topic. They zeroed in on their target and make their kill, so that every word, post, comments have a singular purpose of creating an impact that will blow you away. Such bloggers are also known as “Sniping Blogger” – a term that was coined in one of our most popular previous article – Are You a Sniping Blogger or a Gatling Gun Blogger. Niche Bloggers are so exclusively focused on the specialized subject matter at hand that they seldom stray away from their niche topic. There may be an occasional post here and there that is off topic but generally they stick to their niche topic ninety-nine percent of the time.

For example, dogs is considered a general subject matter. However, a blog exclusively about Pugs is a niche blog; Asian foods is a general topic covering a broad spectrum of Asian cuisines, however, a blog about Malaysian Food is a niche blog as it focused on food that is indigenous to the people of the Malayan culture; Consumer Electronics is a huge field, however, a blog about Apple’s IPod is a niche blog because it is exclusively about a very popular brand of digital listening device called Ipod.

So, what do you consider to be the main characteristics of a profitable niche blog? What suitable monetization methods are at your disposal? What are the pitfalls of a niche blog?

Characteristics of a Profitable Niche Blog

	Highly focused content on niche topic. When you set out to pick on your niche subject of choice as the main topic, it is important to pick a niche that have at least 5 possible fairly strong sub-categories. This is to ensure that you have at your disposal a sufficient number of keywords to build a big blog someday. This will endear your blog to the search engine because people who are searching for a particular term will stand a pretty good chance of finding you.
	In-depth Coverage of the Niche. It is relatively easy to provide a deep coverage of a subject matter for a niche that has a handful of related but strong sub-categories. This could work very well to your advantage especially when you dominate the main and the sub-categories of the topic, such that the first page of the SERPs will show mostly your links. In time to come, dedicated readers and repeat visitors will beat a golden path to your door.
	Popular among Affiliate Networks. Because there are relatively few sites vying for the attention of the Affiliate Network, you can easily stand out in the pack. Marketers are always looking for more people to sell their product and services. If you offer a site that is compelling and is supported by a large captive audience, this would work out to your advantage as the negotiation power shifts to your side.
	You are a Subject Matter Expert. It is relatively easy to establish yourself as an expert in a field that offers little or no competition. Once a position is achieved, traffic will start to pour in.
	Captive Audience leads to Profits. As there are relatively few sites competing in your niche, people who have previously visited your blog and liked it, have a strong likelihood of returning. And, when they do so, they may hopefully click on an Advertisement.
	Unique Content. This point serves as a general rule of the thumb for all blogs – niche and non-niche. It is the main currency of the internet, if your content is not unique, all major search engines will make you regret it by penalizing your site. You will not get any ranking from them. However, if all your content are unique and in sufficient quantity, you will grow in ranking in no time, with other factors being equal, . Post Often and Post Unique.

Monetization Methods of Niche Blogs

One cannot expect to monetize on a niche blog without meeting the majority of the requirements above. The degree with which your monetizing efforts are going to be successful is wholly dependent on how well the above requirements have been executed. For instance, if you have not written enough in-depth content on your niche subject matter including its sub-categories, and you are using context sensitive type advertisement like Adsense, it will result in ads that are not diverse enough, resulting in “Ad Blindness” – a condition of “Ad Paralysis” to be avoided at all cost.

If your niche topic is wide enough to encompass a handful of related sub-categories, monetizing it can be very easy indeed. Any type of Context Sensitive type advertising like Adsense, Kontera Context Links and Bidvertiser will work very well with it. These Advertisements are context sensitive to the keywords used and therefore offer more relevancies to the subject matter, resulting in a higher Click Through Rate (CTR). With careful blending and placements of Ads, visitors that come to your blog looking for specific information will have a higher likelihood of clicking on the Advertisements. Another added advantage of using such Context Sensitive Advertisement Networks is that it only needs to be set up once. After optimizing it for blending and placement, it is basically on an auto-pilot, and you can go about concentrating on producing good content.

You can also easily integrate other Affiliate Products and Services into the mix. Please be very careful not to violate the TOS of any Ads Network especially Adsense which has pretty strict guidelines regarding the usage of other advertising network on the same page Adsense Ads are running.

What are the Pitfalls of Niche Blog?

	Small Audience. A niche blog is by definition catering to a small audience because of the nature of the small subject matter. This will translate to less monetization opportunities, as there are going to be less customers coming to your blog to click on an Advertisement.
	Lack of Affiliate Offerings. If your niche subject does not encompass a handful of sub-categories, it can be hard to find affiliate that carry products and services that complement your blog’s niche topic. This translates to less income opportunities.
	Ad Blindness. If you are using a Context Sensitive Ad Network like Adsense, and your niche subject does not encompass a handful of strong sub-categories, your Adsense Ad block may ads rotating among the same few advertisers, resulting in “Ad Blindness”. This translates to less income potential.
	Tough getting Inbound Links. This is because there are so few sites in the same niche, it hard to get anybody to link to your blog. Also, the sites that are in the same niche will try to retain their visitors and not sent them your way. This translates to difficult establishing a Pagerank.
	Hard to get Traffic. It is difficult to get traffic if users hardly search for a keyword related to your blog’s niche subject matter.

Could your Blog Benefit from a Redesign ?

Stephen Lee — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 21:10:39 +0000

As you’ve already noticed, we’ve went through a major redesign of the header region and a brand spanking new logo is born. The caricature is a depiction of a successful blogger having a good time, blogging in a carefree manner from an exotic beach – and of course this dude could be you!. Sorry to our lady bloggers here, I just have to go with a dude here for obvious reason – because I’m a dude – so no hard feelings please. If you are observant enough, you’ll also notice that I’ll be starting a newsletter pretty soon. Since this blog is about helping you to become successful in blogging whether you are a hobbyist or a Pro, I find the design rather inspiring, fitting and fun. Actually, it doesn’t really matter what I think, most importantly is what you think. So, don’t be shy, please voice your opinions here.

There are no doubt perks to be gained from a site redesign like the buzz and refreshing factors, links galore, new lease of life on Ads, and more leg room. But in my case, I’ve no choice but to redesign the header because I don’t look like Mike Huang.

Buzz Factor

Any dramatic changes to a site are going to have people talking about it in ways that will soon become viral. If you have a lot of RSS subscribers, you’ll notice a spike in their click through rate in response to check out what’s the fuss all about. This would in turn create a lot of buzz for the site. Any publicity is good publicity even though if it is negative. Obviously you’d like that buzz to be positive in nature, but hey you can’t please everyone, our whole would be so monotonous if that’s the case.

Links Galore

The more viral the buzz factor is, the more links it’s going to translate into. Some people call this link baiting. Before you actually overhaul your site design, you would want to send out a preview of what is coming. This would cause other blogs to talk about it, analyzing, critiquing and discussing the new look and feel. The chances are that people are going to link to your site whether they are in favor of your new designs or not. You’d like that they have good things to say about your new designs in their links, but a link is a link to the search engine gods, and it’s going to count towards as an equity in favor of your site, as there is no such thing as a bad link just as there is no such thing as bad press.

I don’t think I’ll benefit from this much, because I’ve not managed to create a lot of buzz beforehand.

Refreshing Factor

Sometimes we all need a little lift to shake us off our monotonous way of doing things. Redesigning the site does help to bring that refreshing effect on us. This is especially true with the color scheme that you go with for the redesign. Studies have found that the color affect our mood as well as for our visitors. For instance, Red evokes “passion” and “excitement”; Blue and Green brings “stability” and “calmness”; yellow and Orange represents “happiness” and “energy”; and Black is a dignified color in certain context but in other offline context it may be traditionally associated with death. According to many studies, with the right color scheme, you will see a better click through rate for your visitors for sure.

For this site redesign, I’ve used a more Red to jive with our passion for blogging and the excitement that it brings. And, I’ve also used more yellow and a brighter Orange – this brings more energy and happiness in which blogging could use more of.

Here’s the before and the after picture of the header – you tell me which one you like better?

Before

After

New Lease of Life for Ads Albeit Short-lived

We’ve all experience this all too often when we are very familiar with a place that we become blind to the things around us. This is because our auto-sensory mechanism just takes over- it’s what makes us efficient and evolving beings so we don’t use energy unnecessarily. In the online world involving ad placements, the same logic applies. It is sometimes called link blindness. We need to shake up things a little, move things around, so that the Ads can become more noticeable and appealing that it will get clicked on more often. This is the principle behind why my rotating button banners Ads have the best Click Through Rate(CTR). Although this may get you what you want in terms of better CTR, it is nevertheless a short term gain because your visitors will soon get accustomed to it and its effect will be gone.

In my case, I’ll not benefit from this because I’ve not make any drastic change to where I’m placing the various components of the blog.

More Leg Room

Yes, everybody could use a little more leg room. With the advancement of technology, and prices of monitor coming down fast, most of your visitors are going to view your site on nothing less than 1000 pixels wide screen. This may mean more ad space or extra navigation room, or simply more space for content that you can stuff before you get side walled – the choice is yours – whatever that you do with it, extra leg room is always nice.

Again, for the same reason above, I’ll not benefit from this.

That’s about all I can think of in terms of benefits for redesigning your site. If you can think of more benefits, please share it with us.

The moral of the story is that no matter how good or bad your redesign turns out to be, these benefits will inevitably accompany it to make your effort a worthwhile cause. So, don’t fret, start redesigning if that’s what you’d wanted to do.

If you like the design of the header, please visit Forest. This guy’s work is phenomenal as you can attest, and I say no more as his work speaks for himself. He is also a seasoned professional at every turn, using his business acumen and gifted graphic design skills; he’s able to translate requirements into works of art that carries a message that would resonate with your visitors.