When I first made a “real website” by buying my own domain (Blogging the Internet), I started to tinker with various content management programs to build my site, and later learned that blogging is the easiest way. Now I’m sticking to it.
But at first I was one of the million newbie webmasters who are lured to the “get rich quick” paranoia” that abound in the internet and also tried my best looking for internet programs that will take me to that paranoia. I was utilizing various pre-hosted sites (my favorite is Freehostia in doing the test-and-try website building trying to find my own niche on the cyberspace and the same time hoping that I will earn somehow through it.
I joined pay per click programs (PPC) where you click banner and text ads and then pay you cents and worse joined a High-Yield Investment Program (HYIP) and was cheated. I lost a couple of dollars joining the site and I swear to myself that I will not join one again.
My frustration is getting worse when I also joined affiliate programs such as Commission Junction, Linkshare and SFI and expected to earn but to avail. These site as good in their own way but my skills in affiliate marketing is very poor and my highest earnings was about $20.40 from CJ when I used my own affiliate link to purchase my own domain.
I share some dilemma with people who say that “internet income is just a false dream”.
I am not a risk-taker especially on the internet. The last thing that I will want myself is to be a victim of internet fraud and loss my hard-earned money and like most cybercitizens I want money and if possible free from the internet.
Then I meet the leader of contextual advertising – AdSense.
AdSense program is 100% free and I have applied to it the moment I wonder why most sites I have visit has that ads powered by AdSense. I applied four times, three times rejected and finally allowed to post ads to my sites using their script code. It took me quite awhile to be able to put AdSense ads in my site considering that I am still learning how to make a site and my knowledge about PHP and HTML is limited.
Since I decided to focus on having a blog, I tried to invest an ad placement on my blog placement, having that trial and error process on making a good and professional looking blog and took a longer time finding a suitable Adsense Friendly template (I’m using Wordpress).
Adsense, like any other contextual advertising program uses your blog content and keywords to place related and suitable ads on your site in a way not to confuse your readers of what is your site all about and irritated for placing blatant advertising banners. The ads put by Adsense have a better chance to be click and earn money from it.
Though Adsense doesn’t allow you to select what ads will appear in your site, you can still exclude ads from your direct competitors (sites that have the same topic or products that you have).
How Adsense know what Ads are to place in your site?
Google uses bots (Google bots), an engine that regularly visits your pages and read your site content, keywords, structure and formatting of pages, language you use and tell Adsense to display ads related to what it sees. The bot also tells AdSense what IP address you use (your location) to display related ads near your region.
The longer that your site is up, the more the bot will access your site and later a tighter match f ads related to your blog will show up. Google bot mostly uses keywords as its tip to Google, so there is a need to use proper keywords on your post because for some reason Adsense prefers post with less picture and larger or bold text in zeroing the subject of your blog.
However, be careful in suing too many keywords. You may make Google Bot understands more quickly your site content but at the same time distracts your readers. A good post that is informative will surely attract readers and make them come back to your site, but you will, but using irrelevant and annoying keywords will drive them away from your site and instead look for other blog that is more useful to your read. Losing a visitor will also results to loss of your Adsense earnings.
Treat your readers by giving them useful information, and not to make them feel that you are just using your blog to make money. There’s nothing wrong in pleasing Googlebot and your readers at the same time. Why not hit the two birds with one big stone?
It will be a great help that your keyword is also your title and use them on your post as well. Ex. You write about computers, make sure it is in the title and repeated in the post so that tightly match of ads will also show thus having a high click through rate from your readers.
Try not to copy content from free sites. You will not only lose your credibility as a blogger, worse risking to be accuse of plagiarism and also getting Google irritated with splogs (short for spam blogs) post. Splogs is very dangerous because it may results to the termination of your account.
Anyway who advertise to your blogs?
Google has a program called Adwords, where business or site owners like you pay to advertise their product and services and also to drive real traffic to their websites.
These guys are bidding on a certain keywords related to their site content and pays some amount depending on the keywords popularity. They post their ads on Adwords and then it is being shown in Adsense.
More Adsense Tips in Blogging
How to Build a Niche Site With a Blog
by: Linda J Bruton
Building niche sites is all the rage these days.
The basic strategy is very simple. Find a niche market that isn't oversaturated. Develop a list of related keywords people are searching on. Then write an article optimized for each one of your keywords. Once you have your articles, upload them to your site. Monitize your site with affiliate links and Adsense.
For this kind of niche site to be effective and make money, it is imperative that you get free traffic, and a lot of it. And that's exactly where a blog can be your best friend.
At its very simplest, a blog is just a structure. It's the bones of a web site. A blog is a simple way to publish and display your content online. Most of us think of blogs as a chronicle of news events, or commentary on news and items of interest. Or personal diaries.
Few people stop to think that you can build any kind of website with a blog. In reality, a blog can be used very effectively to build a niche site. The fact of the matter is, a blog is the easiest way to publish your niche site content. But the biggest reason to use a blog is that it can drive traffic to your site a lot faster than a statically-built site. A niche site built with a blog is a very powerful strategy.
First, choose your niche and research your keywords. Write your first article based on one of those keywords, just as you would when building a regular site. Then set up your blog and publish that article. Your niche site is now live.
To make your site structure the most effective, be sure to choose a blog that allows the use of Categories, such as Word Press or Moveable Type. Use your 10 most important keywords as the name of your Categories. Then file all your secondary keyword articles under those Categories.
Why is this so important? If you keep building your site with keyword-rich articles, eventually you could have hundreds of pages. Each of those pages will have a link to your 10 Categories. And each of those links will use the anchor text of your most important keywords. As a result of all those internal keyword-rich links, your site will end up ranking very well in the search engines for your Category names.
Now it's time to set up your traffic strategy. This is where a blog can really shine. There are many special RSS/blog directories that are hungry for feeds. By submitting your new blog to these directories, you can start getting traffic almost immediately. Quite often these feeds will result in a lot more traffic than all the major search engines combined. This is why it makes so much sense to build your niche site as a blog. You can have twice the traffic, and get it much faster than with a static site.
Here is a list of some of the top RSS/blog directories you should submit your site to:
http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/
Once you've submitted your site to the directories, you can get it indexed by Yahoo almost immediately by adding your RSS feed to your MyYahoo page. If you don't have a MyYahoo page, just go to http://www.yahoo.com. Now click on the MyYahoo link at the top and set up your free account. Once you have your account set up, click on Add Content, then add the URL of your blog RSS feed into the Find Content box.
When you go back to your MyYahoo page, your blog plus your first post should be shown. If you go look at your web stats for your site, you'll find that the Yahoo spider has already made a visit! Your new site should be indexed in Yahoo in just a couple of days. This is a strategy that some marketers were selling for $50 just a few months ago. And it works like a charm.
Every time you add a post, you can alert the RSS/blog directories by "pinging" them. There is a wonderful site at http://www.pingomatic.com that makes this very easy. You just have to type in your blog URL and Pingomatic will send your ping to Yahoo and about 15 other large directories. That will bring the spiders back to your site almost immediately!
During the first month, I would suggest that you write and add a new article every day. Blogs that are frequently updated get the most traffic. And you'll find that the major search engines will spider your site every day. At the end of a month, you'll have a 30-article niche site that is already getting a lot of traffic. If you've monetized your site with Adsense and related affiliate programs, you should also be making money already.
Once you've started building your niche sites with a blog, you'll never go back to doing it the old way again!
About the Author
For more tips and ideas on how to make money blogging, be sure to visit my "Why Marketers Should Blog" weblog at (what else) http://www.whymarketersshouldblog.com
Final Sense
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Blog Your Business
by: Angela Booth
Does your business need a blog?
A blog is a Web log, an online journal. Blogs started out as online diaries, in which diarists shared their everyday lives with the world. From their beginnings as a weird Web fad in 1998, blogs have moved on, and are well on the way to becoming a standard business tool.
Why? Because in February 2003 Google.com bought Pyra Labs, the company which owns the Blogger weblogging tool. Blogger.com, one of the main sites providing blog software and hosting, boasted a
million hosted web logs in early 2003.
Google.com's interest in blogs indicates that blogs are mainstream. A blog help your business in many ways, depending on whether you create a private or a public blog. Blogs are so useful that you'll want to create both.
Your business's private, internal blog
These days, no one works alone. Even if you're a solo business operator, you have colleagues --- partners, contractors, and suppliers with whom you communicate daily. A private blog makes working with a group easier, because you can streamline your interactions, saving time and energy.
A private blog can contain notes to yourself, or to colleagues. It's a place to store information and tips that might not warrant a special email message. You can post information like meeting notes, project tasks and summaries, and updated price lists. You can also post links to large files --- no need to email, fax, or
mail them to and fro.
Your blog is more useful than email, because blog postings are dated, and easily searchable. You can post a message you want everyone to read, and the message stays on the blog. With email, you read and delete, or read and forget.
If you've worked on a project with someone in another state or on the other side of the world, you've blessed email, because it makes sharing information so easy. Using a blog to share information is even easier than using email.
Your business's public blog
A business blog is a marketing tool. A blog can add value to your Web site, or it can take the place of a Web site. Look on it as a combination "What's New" Web site page, and an online journal. Because of a blog's freewheeling nature, it's friendly and relaxed.
If you don't have a site, your blog's a place to put your online CV, portfolio and client list. You can, and should, use your blog to express your personality and expertise.
If you have a Web site, your blog page builds loyalty, because if you provide interesting content, your visitors will return to your site. And because it's a Web page, your blog will appear on search engines, attracting new clients.
Google has been treating blogs differently from other Web pages for a couple of years. Whereas it takes a standard Web page/ site a month to be indexed by Google, blogs are indexed daily. This means that your blog is mega-cheap advertising. You can post something on your blog and have it indexed by Google within a day.
Will creating a blog help your business? As I suggested in the article: "Get Googled And Build Credibility", because Google.com is so popular and indexes so comprehensively, if you focus some of your marketing and promotion time on getting your name out on the Web, you're building your credibility, both online and offline.
(You can read the complete article in the newsletter archives at: http://www.digital-e.biz/newsletter.html
So go ahead, blog your business!
Final Sense
