Market your blog

After you have monetized your blog, now is the time to market it agressively. These are some tips which might help:

1. If you have not submitted your blog URL to the major search engines do so now. See point 3 of my previous post.
2. Go to a related discussion forum (search for one using Google), and start participating actively and constructively there. Subtlely market your blog by including the URL in your signature.
3. Browse related blogs (do a search in Blogger), and post comments constructively and actively.
   
4. Make sure your blog is tagged and searchable in Technorati.com. Technorati is basically a search engine for blogs. From within Technorati, monitor the incoming links to your blog. Reciprocate and further market your blog by visiting those blogs/sites and leave constructive comments.
5. If your posts are technical or science-related in nature, visit digg.com and regularly submit the URLs of your posts, with eye-catching titles.
   
6. Ensure that you have a web tracker/counter such as statcounter.com (if you haven't, see my previous post). Then, through the tracker log, monitor where most of your traffic come from. And increase your marketing efforts at those sites. For example, if you notice that you have some traffic coming from a certain discussion forum, this means it is working, and you should increase your participation in that forum.
   

Filed under [Money_] [Adsense_]

Adsense_: tips on using Adsense

Here are some tips on using Adsense for all Adsense publishers:

1. Never click on the ads on your blog yourself. Genuine visitors can click if they are interested, but not you.
2. Your initial earnings will be low, very low. Like zero. Even established Adsense publishers do not make much. See this on how much they make. However, do not despair. There are tips here on how you can increase your earnings. Be pro-active.
3. Adsense earnings are known to fluctuate. No one knows exactly how the Adsense engine works, but empirically, everyone knows the fluctuations can sometimes be very extreme.
   
4. Monitor the traffic to your blog. Installing a counter (can be hidden) is as easy as copying some code to your Template. One fine example is StatCounter, which provides very thorough analysis reports for free. You can also use Adsense Channels for monitoring. To add a channel, login to Adsense, under Adsense for Content tab, click Channels. Thereafter, you can churn out reports on your channels in Adsense.
   

Money_: some stats on Adsense earnings

ProBlogger conducted a poll some time back. The results show that the majority (40%) of publishers make less than $30 per month.

The key to higher earnings is traffic. You need lots of visitors to your blog. And out of the thousands who visit, a certain small percentage will click your ads. It is through these clicks - and to a much smaller extent the passive viewing of the ads - that you increase your earnings. See this post on how to make money from your blog.

Money_: monetize your blog

It is becoming increasingly possible for people to make a living through blogging. If you are new to this world, follow these easy step-by-step instructions to earn an income (enough for a living even, if you work hard enough):

1. Sign up with Google Adsense and follow the instructions on how to include advertisements in your blog. If you use Blogger, there's an easier way - go to administer your blog, under Template tab, click Adsense (and let it guide you through). Besides Google, Yahoo also offers a competing service called Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN), but it's still in beta and only targets the US market (as at this writing). Rumor has it that YPN pays more.
2. Once you're done, check your blog and make sure that the layout and style is decent enough to not turn off people (how many times have you clicked Back when you see an ugly site?)
3. Next, very importantly, submit your blog URL to the search engines. When the search engines have crawled your site, you can be sure your site will get a lot of traffic, especially if it ranks high in the search results. Google's submission page is here, while Yahoo's here.
   
4. Also very importantly, make sure your HTML pages contain the description and keywords meta tags. The meta tags give the search engines accurate information on your website. In Blogger, you can add meta tags in the Template code, just below the title tag. Here's an example:

<head>
<title><$BlogPageTitle$></title>
<meta name="description" content="Information on dolls" />
<meta name="keywords" content="dolls, barney, barbie, snoopy, " />


5. Content, content, content. Nothing beats good posts in attracting traffic to your blog. Write well and write regularly.
6. Advertise your own blog! If you genuinely feel what you have blogged is of value to others, share it! Visit other blogs and discussion forums regularly and share what you have. Attract visitors to come. Contribute constructive comments to other blogs. Your sincerity will be reciprocated.

Blogging_: enable categories in your blog

Yes, you can have proper categories in your Blogger blog. Just 5 minutes of tweaking needed. For the step-by-step instructions, see this excellent post by netcf2.