Are You Struggling To Make Money Online?

Do you wish there was an easier way to make money online? Of course we all do. But while there are dozens of ways to make money online, still 95% of those starting up internet businesses fail.

One of the easiest ways to make money online is selling digital products. Digital products could be an ebook, an MP3, video or software. Selling these products is fast, easy and commands big profit margins. No inventories to watch, delivery trucks are non-existent and most of all it works 24 hrs a day 7 days a week. Really an entrepreneur’s dream come true.

What are the exact steps involved to make money online with selling digital products? The following steps have been proven to be effective:

1. Choose the right product.

The first thing that you need to do is get a product that you can sell. Be certain that you choose the right product to sell. In choosing a product, you can either create your own or sell other people’s product. However, you must ensure that the product you will sell is in demand and that it is something that many people want or need.

You may check clickbank.com to see and get a feel of what products are in high demand. If you’ve been in the internet for three to four months and have been subscribing for those newsletters from sites you visited, then you may now have an idea of what topics attract large crowds. Subjects on golf, search engine traffic, weight loss, marketing, adsense, dog training, personal improvement and make money online have proven well overtime. There are some niche subjects which also have been drawing huge following.

Remember, the number of people looking for that particular topic, product or subject is extremely important. You can’t make money online if only a handful is interested with that product you are trying to sell. The number of competitors also plays an important role. As much as possible, choose an area with lesser competition. If you’re just starting out, it is hard to compete with guys who are the McDonalds of the industry. If you’re a bit sophisticated, there are tools available to figure this out. You can try the keyword tools and look for topics that have been searched by volumes and volumes. These tools also provide you with the number of competing websites. There is wordtracker.com, inventory.overture.com that you can start with.

If you don’t want to create your own product, you can easily find hundreds of products with master resale rights. What are master resale rights (MRR)? If you own a product with MRR, you have the right to sell it to others and keep all the profit for yourself! With master resale rights, the person who buys from you can also get the resale rights to the product.

There are also products with private label rights. Private label rights give you freedom to alter the product or change the content and put your name on it as the author or originator. You may try warriorforum.com and look at the warrior’s special offer (WSO) for great deals on resale rights.

2. Build your website.

Now don’t scratch you head yet. You will not be building a full blown website but a very simple three page site. The pages are: Sales letter Page, Thank You Page and the Download Page. Trial and completely free web building softwares are available for download. There’s the 123WYSIWYG and NVU which are both easy to use. If you’re not that tech driven then you can hire some college kids in your neighborhood who might be good at building websites. Or you can try elance.com and rentacoder.com to find somebody to do this. Just focus on your goal to make money online.

To accept payment, just use Paypal. It’s easy to get. Using the standard Paypal button is okay. Paypal will ask you for the redirect page, in this case, use your Thank You Page. Don't put the download link there. Put an opt-in in box instead. Say that you will send the download link in the email. The opt-in box is extremely important if you want to build a business. You will have the chance to capture customer information here. You can make money online over and over again once you have a large list of customers.

In the email that goes out after a person subscribes to your opt-in, you will tell them where to download the product. Your download page should contain a link to your product with a few directions on how to download and how to use it. If you are selling an ebook in PDF format, tell them that Adobe Reader is required and point them where they can download it.

3. Generate traffic.

Once you have chosen your product and created your website, you must attract visitors. You cannot make money online if your site doesn’t have visitors. You can get traffic to your website in many different ways. However, you want to be certain that you bring in the right kind of traffic. What is the right kind of traffic? Targeted! You want visitors to come to your site because they want to, not because they are forced to. You want visitors that are interested in your product.

One of the ways to attract traffic is search engine marketing (SEM). SEM is a set of marketing methods to increase the visibility of a website in search engine results pages. Yahoo and Google are the top two sites where most of the web searches come from. Experts estimate that Google account for 45% of the searches while Yahoo gets 30%. In order to make money online, your website must be listed in the top 30 results of the search engines. Do you think anyone would bother to look on page 97 of the results? or page 110?

Your site’s ranking on the search engines will depend on how optimized it is with the keywords you choose and the number of competition it has. The lesser the competition for the specific keyword, the higher the chance of your site to get to the top of the search engines and the chance to make money online is significantly increased.

Another way to get visitors to your site, and this is the quickest one, is by pay per click advertising (PPC). You can try the Google adwords program, Miva and Goclick. Be very careful, however, as PPC advertising may burn your pockets and your plan to make money online would be affected. Make sure to set your daily budget when doing PPC.

These three simple steps to make money online when followed would get you the results you want. There are dozens of ways to make money online. What separates the successful online entrepreneur from a failure is focus and consistency of efforts. Most of the people starting to make money online get sidetracked with every new program that comes to them. If you want to make money online, choose one specific way, and then follow that way until you succeed. Don’t jump from program to program.

18 Lessons I’ve Learnt about Blogging

In November 2002 I first heard the word blog after a mate e-mailed me a link and said I should consider starting one. Within 24 hours I’d created my first blog (a blogspot blog that doesn’t exist today). Since that time I’ve run 20+ blogs (most have survived, some have not) and I’ve also transitioned from hobby blogger to part time blogger to full time blogger.

Along the way have been many challenges, milestones and celebrations so today I thought I’d do some reflection and create a list of things I wish someone had sat me down and told me in the early days.

Here’s my top 18 Lessons Learnt in my 3 years of blogging. Write your own ‘lessons’ list and let us know about it in comments below. If you enjoy this list you might also like to subscribe to my newsletter to keep up to date on more posts like this on blogging.:



1. Be Lucky
I’m increasingly becoming aware that despite the many hours of hard work that I’ve put into building up my business that many others work just as hard and are much more talented than I am but do not enjoy the success that I’ve been fortunate to have. While I don’t believe that luck is the main ingredient in my own story I am convinced that in combination with some of the other things I’ll talk about below it has been of real importance.

The luck I’ve had along the way has included just happening to bump into the right people at the right time (on many occasions), discovering ad systems that just happened to work well on my blogs, starting successful blogs quite by accident, getting links from bigger blogs that led to a snowball effect of incoming links from elsewhere through to choosing the right partners for different projects. I could write many thousands of words on the luck I’ve had but I’ll not bore you with the details except to say that I’ve been a lucky boy.

The key I’ve found with luck is to run with it and to make every lucky instance last as long as possible. So when you strike it lucky enjoy it but also ask yourself ‘how can I capitalise on my good fortune?’


2. Work Hard
Of course the saying that goes ‘you make your own luck’ has some truth to it. Gary Player once said - “The harder I practice, the luckier I get”

I’m a strong believer that to be successful you need to be willing to work hard. While there are plenty of people selling ‘easy money’ on the web I’m yet to find a method of money making that doesn’t have at least some element of work to it.

Success in many areas of life comes out of discipline and hard work. Getting your body in shape, having good relationships, succeeding at study etc all take some level of commitment and work. Work alone is definitely NOT everything (I’ve seen many hard working bloggers who have not had success) but it is one element that I think is essential.

If you want to get to places you’ve never been before you need to be willing to do things you’ve never done before. This sometimes means leaving one’s comfort zone and knuckling down for some hard work.




3. Use the Power of Exponential Growth
I’m not sure that that heading is the right words to describe this but I can’t think of any others that begin to describe the way in which blogging has the ability to snowball. Perhaps it’s a ‘Tipping Point’ thing but as I look at the last three years in terms of blog traffic, earnings, profile and opportunities I see that the first 18 months were very very slow. Growth was definitely there from month to month but because the numbers were so small it didn’t really feel like I was going anywhere.

The wonderful thing about exponential growth is that if you stick at it for the long term it’s a very powerful force. I look over at the poll I’m running this month and see that 27% of bloggers who responded are making $10 or less a month from Adsense and I know it sounds so little.

In reality it’s not that much but it’s more than I was making 2 years ago from blogging.

Here’s a calculation that I kept in my mind in the early days.

If that $10 a month increases by 20% every month in a year you’ll be earning $89.16 per month at the end of the year. Of course that sounds small for a year’s work and I’m sure many bloggers would give up at that point but lets take it further.

If earnings continued to rise by 20% per month for another 12 months and you begin to see the power of exponential growth with a figure of $794.96 per month. Do it for another year and the figure is $7088.01 per month.

Do those figures with the figure of 30% growth per month and the figure after 12 months is $232.98 per month, after two years its $5428.00 and after three years it’s $126,462 per month! You get the picture. Now I don’t want to promise you 30% growth per month for three years straight but as I’ve written before, the power of exponential growth in conjunction with hard work and luck is possible - it’s my story. I see each post I write as an investment in the future and something that has the potential to earn money for me not just today but over the long term.


4. Differentiate Yourself
Part of the ‘Luck’ I’ve had is that I started blogging three years ago and not three weeks ago.

The Blogosphere has changed in many ways - some for the better (the technology and tools these days are much more advanced) and some for the worse. The downside of starting out now is that for every topic there seems to be many blogs already - the web is becoming more and more congested as people discover personal publishing. It’s also become a more competitive business on some levels and in some segments some of the co-operative spirit of blogging has begun to fade as people build their empires.

All of this means that if you want to build a blog that is a runaway success you need to consider how your blog will differentiate itself from all the others out there. While not every blog needs to reach ‘runaway success’ status for you to make a living from blogging (20 reasonably successful blogs can do just as well as 1 amazing one) even lower level blogs need to find ways to stand out from the crowd.

5. Provide Value

This almost goes without saying but I’ll say it none the less. A key question every blogger should ask when starting out is around the idea of what value their blog will give readers. As I look at the year ahead I’ve been asking this question about some of my own blogs. It’s easy to go a bit stale and so reviewing the value that you’re adding is an important part of keeping things fresh.

Value can be about many things including entertainment, education, community, information, companionship etc Without it you’re not likely to get people returning to your blog, linking to it or participating in it over time.


6. Target a Niche
I remember after about 6 months of blogging having a discussion with my readers (I only had the one blog at the time) about whether I should continue to write a blog that was very general in topic or whether I should start a few new ones. I took a poll and they were pretty split over what I should do. I wish at that point I’d started new blogs but out of fear of losing a few readers I decided to plough on with a blog that covered incredibly diverse topics and that increasingly frustrated more and more readers who shared one interest with me but who were not interested in the other things I was writing about.

Moving to a niche approach where I developed blogs around more tightly focussed topics was where my blogging went to another gear and it was probably one of the most defining moments in my business.

Read more about the benefits of niche blogging.


7. Diversify
This connects with my niche blogging point well but goes beyond just having multiple blogs on different niches. It’s really about taking the age old advice of not putting all your eggs in one basket.

While there is some real sense in focussing all your energy on one excellent blog there is some risk involved in this approach.

So much of blogging is out of the blogger’s control and there are numerous problems that could lead to a one blog strategy ending in disaster (these include search engine re-indexing, hacking, loss of data, character assassination, competition, the topic becoming obsolete etc). All good financial planners would advise not to invest in one type of investment but to spread the risk - I’d advise the same with blogging.

Diversification is not just about starting numerous blogs. It’s also about exploring a variety of income streams. i.e. if all your income is from AdSense it might be worth looking at other ad systems, affiliate programs, consulting work etc.


8. Don’t Spread Self too Thin
Of course take my points on hard work, niches and diversification to the extreme and a danger is developing so many blogs that none end up being remarkable enough to develop a readership and profile.

Balance is important so diversify to the point where it won’t decrease the value that you want to offer readers. This will vary from blogger to blogger depending upon many factors including available time, interests, personality, topic chosen etc. For some of you it will mean two blogs, for others it will mean 20 or more.


9. Have a Backup Plan
I’ve written on numerous occasions about the e-mails I regularly get from people telling me that they are quitting their job to become a full time blogger without much thought to how they’ll pay their bills in the year or three that it might take to build up their blogging to pay a reasonable wage.

The moral of the story is that it does take time and in the mean time you need a back up plan and some sort of way to help you transition into your blogging business. Very few bloggers are able to go full time quickly - you might need another job (I had numerous other jobs for over 2 years) or some other form of income to keep you going for a couple of years. In fact the fact is that some bloggers work their butts off for a couple of years and still don’t have anything to show for it at the end. So be responsible and see ProBlogging as having amazing potential but as being something that has no guarantees.

I strongly recommend having a backup income while you transition into blogging and to have in the back of your mind a backup plan for if things go wrong. I’ve been developing a number of other skills and interests over the past year simply because I don’t know how long blogging will last as a full time income. While I hope and expect it will continue to work out for me I know I have a few different options at hand to down the track if it all goes pear shaped.


10. Be Light on Your Feet
One of the things I love about being a solo-entrepreneur is that I have a business that is flexible enough to take opportunities very quickly as they come up. When a wave of luck kicks in after all your hard work you need to be able to position yourself to surf the wave. If you’re too cautious or have a model that is too rigid you might just miss the opportunities as they pass by.

I’ve been caught napping a number of times in this way but have also had a couple of times where I’ve taken the opportunities and reaped the benefits. Of course I’m not saying one should throw caution out the window, but try to build something that has checks and balances that isn’t going to strangle the life giving opportunities that might come your way.


11. Relationships are Key
I was attracted to Blogging in the first place partly because of the way in which it enabled me (a shy guy) to connect with others interested in similar things to me. From the very beginning I enjoyed the relational nature of blogging but also the way in which it allowed me to retreat into my introversion from time to time.

As I look at the things that have been most successful for me in my blogging most of them have had the key ingredient of another person (or more than one) to either help me or partner with me. Most recent is my partnerships with Andy with six figure blogging and Jeremy, Duncan and Shai with b5media but the relationships go back much further than that and are many and varied. I try to put time aside every day to seek out and build relationship with key bloggers that I’d like to work with in some ways - it’s amazing how these connections pay off in many unexpected ways.


12. Establish Boundaries
One of the first blog tips that I ever wrote was on setting boundaries for your blogging. The post itself was pretty naively written at the time - as I reflect upon it I’m not sure I really knew what I was talking about - it was a nice theory at the time. In more recent times I’ve come to see that the point of those I was quoting in the post was incredibly valid and wise.

Boundaries are very important on a number of levels.

Firstly they are important on a security level and for your own well-being. I know this personally from recent events. Writing in the public domain can have it’s own risks associated with it. Work out ahead of time what information you will and won’t reveal about yourself, your personal details and those of your family and stick to those boundaries.

Secondly it’s also wise on a readership and niche definition level. Go changing what you will and won’t write about in terms of topics too often and you run the risk of disillusioning your readership. While variety in topic and voice can add spice to your blog you also will want some consistency in your approach.


13. Don’t read your Own Press
I recently saw an interview with Elizabeth Taylor who was asked if she read much of what people write about her in the media. Here answer was no - she didn’t listen to or ready anything any written or said about her good or bad. Her explanation as to why was (paraphrased)

‘If you listen to the good things people say about you you might just start believing them. If you listen to the bad things people say about you you might just start believing them’

While I wouldn’t go quite as far as Elizabeth Taylor in saying don’t read anything written about you (after all conversation and engagement with others is what blogging is built around) I would encourage bloggers to hold lightly to the opinion of others about you.

It’s easy to become big headed when people rave about how great you and your blogs are to the point where you end up being a complete jerk and think you’re the messiah but on the flip side it’s also easy to become disillusioned and depressed when they rant about and attack you. Part of the skill of being a good blogger that comes over time is that ability to know when to take on board what others are saying about you and when to leave it. It is important to listen to the praise and critiques of others but try to keep them in perspective or it could lead to your downfall.


14. Beware of Hype
Controversy, Sensationalism, Big Claims and Rants are all very useful tools available to bloggers. Many a new blog has found itself in the spotlight (either by design or accident) after a post where the blogger created a stir with one (or more) of these elements.

I don’t have an issue with using these types of posts myself from time to time but I would advise that it’s very difficult to sustain a blog built solely upon these elements. Blog readers are a fairly fickle bunch and will come read your post that generates a stir but unless they find something of genuine value in your blog over time they’ll probably not hang around too long.

By all means use these tactics to get your attention (but have thick skin because creating a stir can cause a backlash) but you’ll want your blog to have something else going for it to make a lasting impression.

Also keep in mind the story of the ‘boy who cried wolf’. Hyped posts might work once or even twice, but they tend to lose their impact over time unless you work hard to make them fresh.


15. Get a Life
I remember someone once telling me that ‘no one ever gets to their death bed and wishes that they’d spent more time at work’. I remember nodding and making affirming noises. You see at the time I was a lazy slob, didn’t enjoy hard work and never spent much time doing any.

Of course these days I actually DO enjoy my work and the temptation is to spend a lot of time doing it. I love blogging for it’s creativity, relationships as well as the good pay packet that enables me to do things for others and I could quite easily spend a lot more time doing it. As a result I spend considerable time working at my business.

But I’ve also learned that unless I take time off the rest of life tends to fall apart at the seams. Not only that but the quality of work I produce suffers after 16 hours in front of the computer and improves drastically when I sleep more than 5 hours and interact with real people or get into one of my hobbies (go figure). While I love it, blogging will still be there tomorrow and I have a much more balanced approach to it than I once did.


16. Make Mistakes
It doesn’t feel that good when you stuff up or make a mistake but as I look back on the last year or so it’s the times when I’ve blundered that opportunities have often flowed. The key is to learn from the mistake, to make the most of what follows and to see it as an opportunity to improve what you do and make the most of any publicity that comes out of it.

Elbert Hubbard got it write when he wrote - ‘The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.’

Learn to see mistakes as opportunities.

17. Be Yourself
One of the temptations of starting a blog is to spend more time trying to emulate other bloggers than establishing your own voice and style. While there are a lot of lessons to be learned from other blogs there is a lot to be said for developing a strong blogging identity of your own.

There are a number of reasons for this that come to mind:

Transparency - readers are an insightful bunch and will quickly find you out if you’re not being genuine
Sustainability - it’s difficult to sustain writing in a voice and personality that is not your own. Be yourself and you’ll last a lot longer.
Consistency - regular readers of a blog overtime take on a sense of ownership of a blog. When you chop and change your writing to emulate and please others you’ll end up disillusioning the people who make your blog what it is (your readers). Be yourself and you’re more likely to be consistent (I’m not suggesting be monotonous - you can still be creative and surprising - just do it in your own style and you’ll be right).

18. There are No Rules
Lists like these always finish with a point like this that says ignore all of the above - but that’s not the point of this point (can you have a point of a point?).

All of the above is essential stuff (for me) but the thing I love about blogging is that it’s such a new and emerging technology that there are very few things that you can’t do or shouldn’t try.

Push the boundaries, experiment with the model you’ve got, try new tools and techniques and have a blast doing it. The worst thing you can do really is make a mistake - and we all know that they rock!

What Lessons have your Learnt in Blogging? Write your own list and leave a comment below telling us about it.

Earnings: Your questions answered

Below answers are taken from Inside Adsense... Nice details to know about

Is there is a minimum number of impressions or clicks I need to get before I can start earning through AdSense?
No, there's no minimum number of impressions or clicks for generating earnings. You can start earning the very first time a user clicks on a cost-per-click (CPC) ad or views a cost-per-thousand-impressions (CPM) ad. Keep in mind, however, that you'll need to earn $100 before your earnings will be paid out to you.

If a CPM ad appears on my site, do I need to receive 1,000 impressions before I am paid?
No, with CPM ads you're paid for each impression, so if you receive 1 ad impression, you'll receive 1/1,000 of the CPM bid for that ad unit.

I received 57 page impressions. Why don't I have any earnings?
It sounds like the ads currently appearing on your site are probably CPC ads, so you'll be paid for clicks, rather than impressions. Our system will automatically display whichever ad or ads representing the highest revenue potential for you, whether they're CPC or CPM ads.

How much do you pay per click or impression?
We don't pay a fixed price for each click or impression - we pay you a portion of the amount paid by the AdWords advertiser. This amount varies based on the actual CPC or CPM paid by the advertiser. Each ad that appears on your site will most likely generate a different CPC or CPM.

Do I get paid when visitors use my search box?
With AdSense for search, you'll be paid when users click on the ads that appear on their search results pages, not from the search queries themselves. You won't be paid if a visitor uses your search box, but chooses not to click on the ads on the search results pages.

Do I get paid when visitors click on my link unit topics?
When a user clicks on a link unit topic, you'll be paid for clicks on the CPC ads that appear on the resulting page of highly targeted ads. However, you won't be paid for clicks on the initial topics themselves. Link units can siginficantly boost your overall AdSense revenue by providing even more relevant and monetized content to your users.

Posted by Theresa Chow - AdSense Publisher Support

CPM ads: Knowing the facts can pay off

Myth: All text-based ads are paid on cost-per-click (CPC) basis, and all image-based ads are paid on a cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM) basis.

Fact: Both text and image ads can be paid on either a CPC or CPM basis. AdWords advertisers can choose which type of ad they'd like to create -- e.g., CPM vs. CPC or text vs. image. In order for a CPM ad or an image CPC ad to win in the ad unit auction and appear on your site, it has to produce an effective CPM greater than the sum of the individual text ads that would otherwise appear.

Myth: If I set my ad unit to 'image only', I'll get exclusively CPM ads.

Fact: As mentioned above, image ads can be either CPC or CPM ads, so you could also see CPC image ads. You might also see public service ads if there is a limited inventory of image ads relevant to your site content. As a rule of thumb, we recommend opting into both text and image ads. Doing so expands the pool of advertisers competing to display on your site – both on a CPC and CPM basis – therefore maximizing your site's revenue potential. It also helps to choose an ad format that supports both text and image ads.

Keep in mind that currently, all CPM ads are site targeted, meaning that your site will only display CPM ads if an AdWords advertiser has decided your content is relevant to their ad campaign. To increase advertiser bidding on your site, you may wish to customize your Onsite Advertiser Sign-up landing page.

Myth: I can't participate in Onsite Advertiser Sign-up because I only want to display text ads on my site.

Fact: Since site-targeted CPM ads can be either text-based or image-based, you can still take advantage of this program even if you only want to show text ads. Advertisers who want to display on your site can create text-based site-targeted ads.

Posted by Theresa Chow - AdSense Publisher Support --

Posted by Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense

AdWords referrals

We're excited to announce that now, in addition to AdSense and Firefox, you can refer users to AdWords in countries and languages where AdSense for content is available. You'll earn $20 each time one of the advertisers you've referred spends at least $100 with AdWords. To get started, choose 'Referrals' on your AdSense Setup tab and look for the AdWords sub-tab.

From Inside AdSense Team

[Inside AdSense] Optimization Month, Week 4: Building and understanding your audience

If you've been following this blog for the past three weeks, you've already seen a ton of great tools to make your site as compelling as possible with AdSense...and if you haven't, what are you waiting for? Scroll down and read about all the techniques that we've touted during this Optimization Month. And now that you have all these great tools at your fingertips, it's time to roll up your sleeves and get to updating your site. I'll wait until you're finished.[time passes]Congratulations! Now your site is ready for all your eager users, but wait ... wouldn't it be great if more people knew about your site and could truly enjoy the fruits of your labor? Of course it would -- that's why this week we'll focus on tips and tricks to drive quality traffic to your site.We've assembled a team of specialists across Google to enlighten you on the many Google products that can help you optimize your site traffic and content. I've no intention of stealing any of their fire, so I'll simply whet your appetites a bit...
Find out about the many webmaster tools that can help you inform the Google crawlers about your site.
Got an RSS feed for your site? You'll be surprised how far that will take you in driving quality traffic to your site.
Learn more about your users, from the pages they're visiting most to the amount of time they spend on your site.And finally, to end the week we have something extra special. I won't ruin the surprise here, but suffice it to say that it'll be worth the wait.Posted by Boyar Naito - AdSense Optimization Team

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Google Search For 1000 Results

This is quite interesting, have you ever searched google for more than 1000 Results for any Query?, Actually you can`t , because Google stores only 1000 results for any Query, see the picture above. Lets say when you search for "Earn While Sleep" in Google you can see the result as "Results 1 - 10 of about 8,310,000 for Earn While Sleep (0.10 seconds)" But when you keep going for pages you will end up in 100th page, that is 1000th Result and no more results/pages will be displayed. And this is quite reasonable, because the probability of a person searching for 1000 pages for a single query is very very less.

Top Paying Adsense Keywords

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[Inside AdSense] New pricing structure for referrals

Last year we asked you for your feedback on referrals, and one of the issues we heard quite frequently was that it was too difficult to generate revenue with AdSense and AdWords referrals. To address this, we've just introduced a new pricing structure for both programs, which will be as follows:

AdSense Referrals:

When a publisher who signed up for Google AdSense through your referral earns their first $5 within 180 days of sign-up, you will be credited with $5.

When that same publisher earns $100 within 180 days of sign-up and is eligible for payment, you will be credited with an additional $250.

If, in any 180-day period, you refer 25 publishers who each earn more than $100 within 180 days of their respective sign-ups and are all eligible for payout, you will be awarded a $2,000 bonus (bonus payouts are limited to 1 per year).

AdWords Referrals:

When an advertiser you refer spends $5 within 90 days of sign-up (in addition to the $5 sign-up fee) you will be credited with $5.

When that same advertiser spends $100 within 90 days of sign-up, you will be credited with an additional $40.

If, in any 180 day period, you refer 20 advertisers who each spend more than $100 within 90 days of their respective sign-ups, you will be awarded a $600 bonus (bonus payments are limited to 1 per year).

These rules will also apply to users that you have already referred but who have not yet reached one of the new earning/spend thresholds. For example, if you referred an AdSense publisher who has currently earned $2.00, you will be paid $5.00 if that publisher reaches the $5.00 mark. But, if you have referred an AdSense publisher who has already earned $10.00, you will not be paid $5.00 retroactively for that referral reaching the $5.00 mark. However, should that publisher eventually reach the $100.00 earnings mark within 180 days, you will be paid $250.00.

Finally, please keep in mind that publishers may not click on their own referral ads and will not be paid for referring themselves for any product. For more information about referrals, please visit our Help Center.

The Most Important Tip For Better Writing

I’m going to let you in on a little secret: Becoming a better writer is the best thing you can do to improve your blog’s readership and traffic. Not how many buttons you have for easy submission to social services, not detailed SEO optimization, and certainly not gimmicky headlines that are created to tempt potential readers into reading your article. All of these things do have some effect on getting people to your blog, but if they don’t like what they’re reading, they’re sure-as-shootin’ not going to come back. It’s all about the content.

Good writers have an advantage on traffic because their readers come back every time they write a new article. Many blog readers are also bloggers, so they in turn link to the posts. The more links a blog has, the higher its posts rank in search engines, and the blog receives even more traffic. Not only that, compelling content gives readers a reason to submit to social sites like Digg and Del.icio.us (regardless of whether or not you have those handy buttons).

So how does one define a good writer? At the very least a decent writer can construct sentences that show at least a 3rd grade reading level. (While this is a rather facetious statement, I have come across a couple blogs that don’t meet this standard. Hopefully the authors really were 2nd graders.)

Some other things I look for in a good writer:

Great word choice. It’s not how many big words you know, but carefully choosing words that fit perfectly.
Decent grammar. While blogging is a more forgiving medium, proper usage of grammar still shows masterful writing.
The ability to make me laugh out loud. There are a few writers who can do this, and it’s a huge draw for me.
There are a few other undefined variables that go into being a great blogger, but really it’s just something the reader can sense. So how does one improve on all of these aspects of better writing?

Really, the answer is painfully simple:


Read other great writers.

That’s it. There’s no magic involved here. The more great writing you can soak up everyday, the more your writing will improve.

Sure, one could take a writing class to improve their writing chops. But how much do you remember from your English education in high school or college? I can’t remember hardly anything except funny words like “dangling modifier”. (That one gets me every time.) I do remember great writing though.

So to get us started, here are a few great writers that I read frequently:

Merlin Mann of 43 Folders
Gina Trapini of LifeHacker
Kathy Sierra of CreatingPassionateUsers
Woot blog
Any of the All Things Digital blogs
Reading more high-caliber bloggers is one of the most effective ways to improve your writing. What you read shapes how you write. If you read better blogs, you’ll start to see immediate results in your own writing. And it’s a lot more fun than learning about misplaced modifiers and past participles!

Blogging Tips: Writing Purposeful Content

Writing with keyword-rich content helps your blog be found and readers to fully understand what you are writing about. Write consistent and purposeful content.

The more inline your content is with your blog’s purpose, the more concentrated your use of keywords will be throughout the entire blog, not just on a per-post basis. The more diverse your blog’s content, the more diffused your keyword usage will be across all of your blog.

Make a plan for your content. Make lists of the topics you will write about in keeping with your blog’s purpose. Stick to those subjects as much as possible to build your blog’s reputation as the place to come for answers on those subjects.

What Are The Benefits Of A Focused Blog?
Content is synonymous with the subject.
Links are synonymous with the subject.
It builds a reputation.
It builds authority.
It becomes a destination.
It becomes a source.
Your Blog’s Content Labels Your Blog
If your blog tells more stories about your life than reports on the news and world around you, then it’s a personal journal or memoir. If your blog reports and comments on politics, it’s a political blog. If it has more reviews of products and services than other content, it’s a review blog. If it has more photographs than text, it’s a photoblog. If it has more music than text and pictures, then it’s a music blog. If it has more video than music, text, and pictures, then it’s a video blog, vid-blog or v-blog. If your blog has more ads than content, it’s in the business of blogging.

The majority of the content on your blog indicates the purpose of your blog. When labeling your blog, take a serious look at its content. As your blog evolves, the value of your blog comes from the content you build over time.

Readers Thrive On Consistency And Continuity
If you create an expectation of content on your blog, readers return expecting to find similar content. If you switch one week from blogging about grooming pets to blogging about grooming horses, you have set an expectation that your blog is about grooming animals. If you switch from grooming dogs to racing cars, readers are thrown off and their expectations aren’t met. The odds are they will not return for more.

It used to be said that predictability was boring. In blogging, predictability builds return customers. They know you are the expert on this subject and that you are the source for information. Meet their expectations when they return.

Telling Your Story With Words and Images

Words tell their own story. They bring forth rhyme and reason, color attitudes, and move people. Combining the power of the verbal image with the visual can either enhance your story or overpower it. Finding that happy medium is the challenge facing every writer using images with their writing.


Bloggers often use a combination of words and images to convey a message. Some use more words and less images, others use more images and less words, while others struggle to find the way to get the message across equally with words and images.

Like words, a photograph tells a story. It can tell the whole story or part of the story. It’s up to the photographer, like the writer, to determine how much of the story is told by the image and how much is told in words.

When the blog post is a photography essay, where the images tell part of the story and the words tell the rest, how do you choose the images to go with the words? How do you combine written and visual media to form complete picture in your blog post?

When planning your photographic essay consider the following:

What are you trying to say?
What is the point of this picture?
Does it add to the story?
Does it subtract from the story?
Is the point really evident?
As you develop your blog post and examine the words and images you want to use, ask these questions of each image and paragraph as you struggle to find the right combination and balance for your message.


Finding the Right Combination of Words and Images
When you know the answers to the questions, choosing the right images for the story helps you tell the story while using enough words to fill in the rest of the blanks. When is the image the story and when are words necessary for the story?

It’s a balancing game between images and words. Let’s answer some more questions to help you find that balance in your blog posts using images.

What is the point of this picture?
What is the point of the story? Is the story about the forest or the trees? Or is it about the land the trees are on? Find the significant visual element to enhance the words you write.

What do you want to say? What are you trying to tell the reader? Is your story about how hard life is for a tree in a dark forest and how it must fight the shadows to reach for the sun and life? Or is it about the scientific process of forest succession?

Look at the photograph or graphic. How many message points can you find in the image? How many stories is it telling? If it is more than three, the image is too much work for the reader to interpret. If it makes one or two points, supporting the content’s intension, it’s a winning image as it balances itself with the story’s message.

Think through the concept and story line. Find the special interest, the main point that will literally “sing” to the readers. Then decide what part of the story needs images and which needs words, and choose accordingly.

Is the image a part or parcel?
Is the image a part of the story or the whole story?

Images which accompany articles can be the whole story or merely pieces of the puzzle. The words can carry the message or serve support the visual message.

With the story of the tree,words may tell of a passing breeze which drops a single seed into the soil, and the tree’s struggle to survive. The photographs could show a seedling pushing out of the ground or a tree bent with snow and ice. Or a leaf or branch stretching out to grasp glimpses of the sun. Or maybe a tree seed in a child’s hand.

Does one image tell the whole story of your blog post? Or do you need several working together they may add to the entire post content.

Does the photograph move the story forward?
Just as each word leads to the next, moving the reader through the words, sentences, and paragraphs to the end, so your choice in photographs and graphic images must lead the reader through the story towards its conclusion.

So many blogs and websites use photographs because they think they have to, rather than to add to the point they are making, thus readers have become immune to the power of the image since it rarely relates.

Make images relate to the subject matter. The eyes usually glance to determine if the image is relevant to their purpose there, and if valid, the reader will spend a few more moments with the image, then return to the text. Scrolling down, they will see another image. If the content continues to match the images, the pictures become more important to the story, thus the reader will be more drawn to them. Add another image, and the reader is now following bread crumbs as you move them through the story, making the connections between the written content and visual.

Avoid making the reader pause and wonder why the image was included. This stops the flow. If the reader spends more time with the photograph than the text, they may never return to the text, assuming the photograph tells the whole story.

What emotions are necessary to tell the story?
A good story has an emotional context or subtext. What emotions need to be evoked for your story to connect with your readers? Examine the words you are using to write your post. Are they happy? Sad? Angry? Confused? Melancholy? Thoughtful?

It is important that the images you choose also invoke those same feelings. Think about the emotional content of your images. Are they bright and cheerful? Soft and gentle? Quite and thoughtful? Dark and confused or vivid and angry? Does the photograph tell the emotional story of your article?

Two children playing on the sand tells of youth, fun, magic times of sharing and the joy and simplicity we may have left behind. An older couple watching the sun set from a park bench tells a story of aging, quiet, peacefulness, and contentment. A flower, depending upon how it is photographed, can display joy or sadness, so the image’s emotional quality is supported by the words influencing its story.

Any time you can capture the audience’s heart with moving images, the more willing they are to read the article and connect with the it.

Do you have the right balance between images and words?
Balance is critical. Do you have enough images to tell the story? Or have you crowded the story with too many images?

Ask yourself these questions over and over again as you find the delicate balance between the words and the images, combining the two to tell the story.

Technical Tips for Using Your Own Photography
As a professional writer and photographer, I’m constantly challenged to find the right combination of images and words to convey my intent in print or the web. Here are some tips to help you create better photographs to include with your blog posts and writing.

Take your time: The greatest gift you can give a photographic subject is time. The more time you spend with a photographic subject, be it person, animal, or inanimate object, the more familiar you become with it, and the more you see to photograph. A rushed picture only catches glimpses of ideas. A well-thought out and patiently sought photograph features whole ideas and concepts.
Use lots of film: While few photographers are using real film today, it still takes a lot of pictures to find the right one. Fill your digital media cards taking five, eight, fifteen, twenty-five pictures of the same subject. Don’t let one picture be the only choice you have when you sit in front of your computer. The difference between an okay picture and an award winner can be in the blink of an eye, a shifting of the light, or a turning of the head. Give yourself choices.
Don’t photograph at eye level: Everyone takes pictures at eye level, camera to their face as they stand in front of the subject. Try sitting down, lying down, hanging upside down, photographing the subject from a different perspective. With small children and animals, get down to their eye level rather than pointing your camera down. Experiment with different positions to find a new angle of view.
Work from a variety of angles and positions: Do you always need to photograph your subject facing the camera? Why not a profile? Photograph them looking at the subject. By changing the position of the subject, you can often change the story or sub-text of the image. Work the subject from all angles so you can choose the perspective that helps tell your story.
Learn more about your subject from all angles: Looking at a subject can only tell you so much. Study your subject. Read books and articles about it. Read fiction, facts, and even children’s stories to get different perspectives. Not everyone looks at the same thing with one point of view. Investigate how others see so you can see more.
Watch the lines and positions: Humans tend to prefer things in their proper place, looking like they should. We expect the ground to be level, water to run downhill, and trees to grow up. Shaking those expectations can create slightly disturbing images and detract from your point, unless your point is confusion and mixed metaphors.
Light counts: Morning and evening light flatters most subjects with warm colors and less contrast. It’s the best time to photograph most subjects outdoors. A high overcast sky creates a soft, gentle light on your subject whereas a bright sunny day creates strong shadows and washes the color away. Choose images with good lighting to enhance and complement the subject.
Horizontal vs Vertical: Don’t forget that a camera has two points of view: horizontal and vertical. People are vertical, trees are vertical, so turn the camera on its side. Web pages are vertical, and few web page designs feature wide columns, so vertical images tend to play better on a web page than wide horizontal images.
Simplify, Simplify, Simplify: Simplification is probably the single most important technique. Just like you do when editing your writing, in photography you need to eliminate the distractions, the unnecessary content. Do you need a shot of the forest floor with all its clutter and dead leaves? Is that the story? Or is it about the leaves themselves and not the clutter? Keep the main point of your story in mind as you look for images to represent it. Keep it simple. Too many words can spoil a story. Too many subjects can spoil a great picture.
Choose your words carefully around images. Choose your images to help your written message, whether they are graphic images or photography. Find the natural blend of words and pictures that complement each other. Allow both to share the spotlight in your blog and you will find the magic of photography enhancing the magic of your writing.

How Long Should a Posts Be?

I notice most of your blog entries are short. I have a habit of not necessarily being long winded, but very detailed. I want to cover all the bases and make the article “full”.

However, I realize that I start running into posts that scroll through 2 sometimes 3 pages. I keep paragraphs short, try to use to accentuate, and bold/color where possible, but I still can’t help but feeling that while my site is great for content, some folks may not want to read all that.

Any suggestions on the length of my articles? I keep thinking that right now I want to build “pillar articles” as I believe you called them, and then link to them later on. It seems to me that long and detailed articles now will help get me indexed and linked, and then shorter articles may keep the feed readers happy.”

Hmmm - one of the longer questions that I’ve been asked (sorry - couldn’t resist).

Let me answer with six points:


1. Both Can Work
I believe a blog can be successful based around both short and long posts. Check out sites like Engadget or Gizmodo for short post sites (often newsy based ones like short posts) or Read Write Web or Steve Pavlina for longer, deep and/or analytical ones.

I think the key is to develop a rhythm in the style and focus of your blogging so that readers come expecting to get what you offer them.


2. You’ll Attract Readers Who Like Your Style
You’ll probably find that the type of post that you write will attract a certain type of reader also. For example I know with Steve Pavlina that I often hear extreme views expressed about his writing. Some don’t have the patience for his long posts - others thrive on it and wouldn’t have him change at all.


3. Consider the Life Stage of Your Blog
One factor to consider is the age and life stage of your blog. One strategy that many bloggers use in the early days of their blogs is to build up a good number of longer ‘pillar‘ or ‘cornerstone‘ posts on a blog. These can help you to build credibility but will also be articles that link to later on as you blog.



4. A Tip for Long Posts
If you are someone who goes with a longer post strategy I would suggest that you do think about making your posts scannable as most people who read content online don’t read every word. Work hard at drawing people’s eye down the page to ensure they get to the end of your posts.

Overall I’d advise bloggers to be yourself, experiment with different styles of blogging until you find something that works for you and then go with it.


5. Post Length and Links
Your comment about longer posts getting more links is an interesting one. To some extent I think you have a point. I’m sure if I did some analysis of the posts that get linked to most on my blogs I’d find that they tend to be on the medium to longer side - however it’s not always the case. In fact some of the smaller posting blogs that I mentioned above get linked to ALOT (check out the first post in my list of suggest reading below on A-Listers).


6. Post Length and SEO
I’m sure there are a few SEO types lurking around that can give better advice on this - but from those I’ve talked to the recommendation has generally been that very long posts can actually hurt your Search Engine ranking and that a better approach is to have posts well focussed upon one topic and of a length somewhere between 400 - 800 words (although there’s lot of variation on what ‘experts’ say). Having said this - I think most good SEO types will tell you to write posts at the length that it takes you to communicate what you want to say.

Are you a long or short post blogger? What works for you best as a blogger and as a reader?

Where to Get Product Pictures for your Blog

Frank Johnson (no url provided) asks - “Darren - my question is how you find product photography for your product-related blogs. Do you 1) take photos of the products yourself; 2) grab them off the manufacturers’ websites after asking for permission to use them; 3) grab them off the manufacturers’ websites without asking for permission (assuming it’s fair use); 4) do something else? Thanks!”
I generally take the approach of using a companies product shots without permission (if they’re the original producer of that content). In reality I am generally emailed press releases when a new product is launched which includes a product shot (or a link to one). Most major manufacturers also have press sections on their sites which generally have image galleries specifically designed for use in the press or online media.
The key is to compile a list of the official sites and keep an eye on them (hint: don’t just look at the US sites, often products are released in Europe and Asia before the US).
When I can’t find these I also have relationships with a couple of other blogs and sites in my niche where I have reciprocal agreements to use pictures that they’ve used (and they can use mine).
In a last case resort I’ve asked for permission to use other site’s shots if they’ve specifically taken them but it rarely comes to this - manufacturers are pretty good at getting pictures out pretty quickly once a product is released.

Is Your Blog Truly Valuable?

Valuable content. Most people know this is the way to be successful in blogging.
Sure there are other important factors too. Traffic, design, usability, community … All the good stuff.
Whatever reason people have for visiting, they stay for the content.
Here is the catch. Have you actually sat down and worked out what “valuable content” means?
Is it a one-off post that gets to the front page of Digg?
Articles that get lots of links?
Posts that attract comments?
Is it that top 100 list you bookmarked?
A funny cartoon that gets pinned to a cubicle wall?
Flash games you just can’t put down?
All of the above?
Value is tough to pin down. The definition depends entirely on point of view. What is valuable to the creator could be subscribers and AdSense clicks, while the reader could be just looking for a solution to their plumbing leak.
What is valuable depends entirely on your audience. Before you work out what you need to create, you need to get inside your audiences head and have a really good poke around. Solve their problems, motivate, educate and entertain.
While most people would love to have millions of visitors, thousands of subscribers and maybe a top 100 spot in the technorati list, if you are not supplying value then all of these lovely high-scores and stats are hollow at best.
How do you know when you have created a valuable blog? The biggest test of all is to ask yourself would anyone miss your blog if it disappeared over night? Look around your niche, I am sure you can pick one or two blogs that you would miss. This blog you are reading right now is on my personal list of daily resources. Some blogs go beyond being useful and interesting and enter the holy grail of “required reading”.
Feed readers are getting more and more cluttered. All the time I am hearing of people culling their feeds, housekeeping down to a manageable number. Like most people I have subscribed to a ton of blogs, can’t recall half their names, wouldn’t miss 90% of them if they stopped posting.
If you want your blog to keep its subscribers you have to earn that place. Create a pen portrait of your typical subscriber. Ask your readers what they want you to write about. Take care of your comments and notice what people say. Most of all work out what they need and supply it to them, because of you don’t you know there are another ten blogs just like yours waiting to take your place.

A Process for Persuasive Blogging

Today I was digging through Joseph Sugarman’s ‘Advertising Secrets of the Written Word‘ and came across a section describing how he teaches students to work out the sequence of ad copy.
Without rehashing the whole chapter his style is very much about identifying a reader need and then leading them through a logical process of asking questions and providing answers to a point where he can close the sale.
In asking the right question at the right time in an ad he argues that you get the to read on and establish a flow for your readers to progress through your ad (or if you’re blogging, your post).
In the same section Sugarman also suggests copywriters use a Flow Chart to outline the process that you’re attempting to lead readers through.
At each step along the process you state a problem or question that your readers need to overcome and present an answer to that problem or question.

The idea of a flowchart is probably not something that most bloggers would do on any given post - however it’s a good exercise to do occasionally on longer posts (or series of posts).
In fact I used to use this type of approach when writing sermons and have applied it quite a few times over the last couple of years in writing posts.
Another way of thinking about it is like this:
1. State ultimate Problem - starting with a problem that your reader needs to overcome (or a need that they have) is a great place to start if you want to call them to some action. People rarely take action on things if there’s no felt or perceived need.
2. Outline sub-problems - break down the larger problem into sub problems that need to be overcome for that problem to be solved. You’ll then tackle each problem one at a time.
3. Answers/Solutions - Logically step through each of the identified sub problems one at a time. Every time you propose a solution for one of the smaller problems you make a stronger case for the solution of the ‘ultimate’ problem
4. Call to Action - once you’ve tackled each of the smaller issues or problems along the way you’re in a good position to restate the ‘ultimate’ problem and call readers to an action that will answer it and meet the need that they have.

This sort of process will obviously work better for some blogs than others (the way I’ve written it is ideal for ‘how to’ blogs) - however it can be applied in a variety of situations.
It works because of the weight from the accumulation of answers. Give it a go and tell us how you find the process.

Giving Underperforming Posts a Second Chance with Updates

Have you ever written a post that you thought would hit the spot with your readers, generate lots of interest and/or stimulate a great conversation and then find it fell flat on it’s face?
I have - in fact it happens all the time for a variety of reasons:
Sometimes your posts fall over because other stories break in the blogosphere and hog all the attention Perhaps you just had some bad luck and the right influential blogger didn’t happen to see your post (and spread the word) At other times its because you posted on the wrong day of the week Or perhaps you wrote the post in the early days of your blog before you really had any readers to read it Alternatively it can be simply that your post wasn’t good enough Many of these unsuccessful posts slide off the front page of a blog never to be seen or thought about again (by your readers or by you) - however, perhaps in time, they deserve a second chance. After all, you’ve put work into researching and writing them and with a second chance in the spotlight they could actually reach their potential and become more fruitful and rewarding to you as a blogger.
Over the last few weeks I’ve experimented on a number of occasions with giving old posts that I felt hadn’t lived up to their potential a second chance. I’ve done this in a few different ways with varying degrees of success but wanted to share the method that was most successful for me (as well as a few others at the end of this post).
Reposted UpdateThe most successful of my experiments with giving old posts a second chance have been reposting them on the front page of a blog with updates.
I did this a few days back with a post on DPS on Slow Sync Flash. The previous version of the post had been posted back in January when my readership was considerably smaller than it currently is (ie most of my current readers wouldn’t have seen it before) and while it had been moderately successful in terms of generating comments I was never completely satisfied with the post (in terms of what I’d written and/or the traffic it got).
So I updated the post with a few tweaks that made it more useful, attractive and relevant and reposted it at the top of my blog (simply by changing the posting date in WordPress). I also included a note that it was an updated post at the end of the post.
IMPORTANT NOTE - I am able to do this at DPS because I have a permalink structure that does not include dates (ie it is just the BlogName/PostName not BlogName/Date/PostName as it is here at ProBlogger. if you have dates in your permalink structure you shouldn’t use this method as you’ll end up with a new URL for the post which can mean you lose any SEO ranking your previous version of the post had.
The results of this updated repost were significant with a front page appearance on Digg, large StumbleUpon traffic, being featured on the front page of Delicious and link ups from many blogs including a few authoritative ones.
The advantage of this method is that the post not only gets a second chance in the spotlight - but because it’s an established post with some Search Engine Ranking - the combination of the content being updated and new comments being added (SE’s like fresh content), the appearance on your front page and the extra links that the post might generate means that the post will build it’s SEO authority.
The danger of this approach is that if you do it too often with posts that most of your readers will have seen before you run the risk of them becoming disillusioned with you. I don’t have a problem with updating old posts to make them more relevant and useful - but some of your readers might get a bit sick of reading the same old stuff if you do it too often.
This approach works best on evergreen or timeless posts - particularly ‘how to’ or ‘tips’ posts.
Other ways of updating content and giving it a second chanceThe reposted update is something that has worked very well for me on a number of occasions. However there are other ways to give an older post a second chance including:
Complete Rewrite as a new post - in this approach you simply take the concepts from your previous post and rewrite it from scratch as a new post on the blog. You might make the same posts, update some of your thoughts, add new points etc but end up with two posts on the same topic. I’ve used this approach with some success also. I would generally link back to the previous version so readers can see the progression of my ideas. Update Posts and Link to them - another approach is to update an older post and then write a new post announcing the update with a link to it. This doesn’t tend to work quite as well for some reason - perhaps because the old post still has your old date on it and can be seen as ‘dated’ by many (it’s amazing how people write off old material as being not current or old for just being written a few months back). Archive Compilations - posts that look back at a year gone by and that link to old posts can also be another way of driving people back into your archives for a second look. I tend to do this on special occasions (blog anniversaries, the end of the year etc). It is a gentle way of reminding new readers that there is more to your blog than what they might have seen. Prominent Links to Key Posts - linking to old key posts in side bars, headers, posts or even as ‘related posts’ under your posts can be ways of giving old posts a second breath of life. This is by no means as radical as reposting an old post - but over time this can drive significant traffic back to an older underperforming post. Promoting Old Posts to Other Sites - this is something I’ve had some success with also - but quite accidentally. A month back I noticed a spike in the traffic coming to DPS from Digg. I immediately thought that one of my most recent posts was the one bringing in the traffic - however when I checked out where the traffic was heading I realized it was to a post that was 9 months old. One of my readers had stumbled across it and had thought it digg worthy. Others had jumped on board and as a stroke of luck and with no work on my part I had a hit on my hands as it went to the front page. It struck me at this point that perhaps my archives held other old posts that had not been promoted to other larger sites. As a result I submitted a couple of older posts to a couple of large blogs and to my amazement they were picked up and linked to. I should note that one of the main reasons that I suspect this works on DPS is that I don’t time stamp my posts. I’ve written more on this practice previously (it’s something that will again suit evergreen timeless content more than blogs that are newsy and whose posts need the context of a date to be useful to readers). So do you update posts? If so how do you do it and have you had any success with doing so?

8 to 9 Posts Per Week - Too Many? Not Enough?

Over the weekend I asked Blogger readers to tell us how many posts they’d written on each of their blogs last week.
142 comments were left referring to a total of 181 blogs. Here are a few of the figures:
The average number of posts that bloggers posted to each blog was 8.9 for the week.
The most common response was 5 posts for the week (27 blogs had this number of posts - or 15%).
50% of blogs had 6 or less posts posted to them (and 50% had 7 or more posts over the week - or 1 post per day)
Here’s how things look when we graph them. The bottom axis is the number of posts written and the left axis is how many blogs had this many posts.

How Many Posts Did You Write Last Week?

Time for a quick reader question:

How many Posts did you post to your blog/s last week?

Lets make the dates from Sunday 10th June to Saturday 16th June.

I’ll kick it off:

Here at ProBlogger I posted 40 posts - at Digital Photography School I posted 5. Those numbers are pretty average for me (although at ProBlogger I was relying upon guest posts pretty heavily last week).

What to do with 10 Hours on Your Blog?

Ross asks - “What is more important, working on getting more traffic (digg, links from high traffic sites) or working on search engine optimisation? If you had 10 hours to spend on one or the other which would benefit you more?”
I think both strategies can be important for a blog - depending upon it’s life stage. They’re also really linked…
I’m a big believer in getting good SEO principles into play on a new blog from day one so in the very early days I’d work on some SEO above trying to leverage other site’s traffic. However most blog platforms come with fairly decent SEO these days and most of what I’d do on an SEO front after a few basic tweaks is while I’m writing a post (ie good titles, using keywords well etc.
In terms of leveraging traffic from other sites - a lot of this also happens for me in the writing process. Knowing the type of style and topic of posts that people like to link to is a big part of it. I don’t tend to actively promote many of my posts to other sites these days but instead let my readers do a lot of it.
Not sure if I’ve really answered your question Ross. So I’ll say this:
If it was in the first week of a blog’s life I’d work on the SEO of the blog (things like getting title tags right, looking at how it interlinks internally etc). In fact I’d work on this stuff before the blog was launched - but it probably wouldn’t take 10 hours. Once this stuff is set up it’s not something I generally spend a lot of time on - my focus switches to content creation.
In the coming weeks (and months) I’d work hard on developing key content that is useful, unique and attractive to other sites. I’d also promote some of that key content to other key blogs in the niche I was attempting to break into (keep in mind that in doing this you’re also really working on your SEO as incoming links play a big part in helping your Search Engine ranking). 10 hours a week doing this can really have a powerful impact!
What would you say is the most effective use of 10 hours as a blogger?

On Site SEO Techniques

Having looked at Off site Search Engine Optimization Techniques I’ll now turn my attention to examining some of the factors you might like to keep in mind as you build your blog - (or Onsite techniques - things you do on your blog that help build a higher ranking). As with all SEO techniques there are many of these and a lot of speculation around all of them so let me touch on as many as I can:
1. Keyword Rich Content - identify a few keywords for your article that you’re hoping will get indexed highly by Google. Don’t pick too many but consider the questions
How do I want people to find this post in Search Engines? What will they type into Google if they want information on the topic you’re writing? How would I find information on this topic in the Search Engines? What results come up when I do plug these keywords into Google? What other keywords are other sites using? The answer to these questions will give you a hint as to what words you’ll want to see repeated throughout your article a number of times.
These keywords will need to be the most common words used in your article. Use them in some or all of the following ways:
Keywords in post and page titles (read my post on using keywords in titles) Keywords in URL of page (blog herald wrote on this a while back) Keywords in outbound links (read this article on the pros and cons of outbound links) Keywords in bold tags (try do it at least once) Keywords in heading tags (there is debate over exactly how to use them but it’s generally accepted that h1 tags are important and that h2, h3, h4 etc tags also have an impact. Having said that I’ve seen some pages rank very well in search engines without using heading tags. There are many tutorials online about heading tags - here’s one.) Keywords in image alt tags (here’s how) Keywords in the general throughout the text of your post - but especially early on in the first few sentences Keywords in meta tags (they seem to be less valuable these days but many still believe they are useful with some search engines - here’s a Guide to meta tags) Of course you can go over the top with keywords in posts and let it destroy your content - but if it fits with what you’ve written tweak it to include the words you are targeting a couple of extra times. Most SEO experts recommend getting your keyword density up to between 5-20% - I think 20% is probably bordering on massacring your content.
One last word of warning and disclaimer on keyword rich content (because I can just hear the comments on this post already) - don’t sacrifice your readers experience of your site just for the sake of SEO. Yes keyword density can be important in climbing the search engine rankings - but more important is that your content and design are user friendly and helpful to readers. There is nothing worse than a site that is stuffed with keywords - these sites come off as cheap, nasty and spammy - don’t fall for the temptation.
2. Themed sites - One of the growing theories of SEO is that you are more likely to rank well if you have a substantial amount of pages on a similar theme. ie a niche topic blog will probably rank higher than a general one that covers many topics. Build a blog with over 200 pages of content on the same theme and you’ll increase your chances of ranking well as SEs will see you as an authority on the topic. The take home advice here is to keep to some kind of a topic/niche/theme for your blog. It is also probably another argument for categories and tagging posts that relate together strongly.
3. Site Design - Search Engines like well laid out, well coded and easily to navigate sites. Make sure your pages validate (I need to work more on this) and that they are viewable on all major browsers. Search Engines don’t tend to like too much Flash, Frames or Java Script in your site - keep it simple and clean and their robots will index your site a lot faster and more accurately. Also try to keep your blog free from dead links (a challenge for those of us with older blogs with big archives).
4. Interlink your Site - The way Search Engines index your blog is to send little robot crawlers to your site to track what you’ve written and follow the links. Make it easier for them to get around your blog by using internal linking wisely. Most SEO experts recommend that you provide some sort of Site Map that means every page on your blog is just a link or two away from every other one. One way to do this for bloggers is to make sure that your category pages are in your sidebars as I do in this blog. Also make sure every page links back to your main page and any other important pages on your site. If you’re writing on a topic you’ve previously written about consider linking to what you’ve written before or use a ‘other relevant posts’ feature at the base of your article. You’ll see in my menus at the top of the page a number of my key categories and articles. One of the impacts of having them highlighted in this way is that they have become some of the most highly ranked pages on ProBlogger simply because they are linked to from every page of this blog.
5. Update regularly - The more you update your blog the more often Search Engines will send their crawlers to your site to index it. This will mean your new articles could appear in the index within days or even hours rather than weeks. This is a natural benefit of blogging - make the most of it!
6. Outbound Links - There is debate over how SEs treat outbound links from your blog. I’m in the camp who believe that relevant outbound links enhance your site’s ranking in search engines. I always link out to quality relevant sites that I think my readers will find useful and have a little anecdotal evidence that seems to support the theory that this is healthy for the way SEs index you (check out Waynes article on the topic for more info). Linking to sites outside your own blog does mean you end up sending traffic away from your blog so you need to count the cost of such a strategy. Note that you should always try to link to reputable and relevant sites to your own page. Also keep in mind that too many outbound could have detrimental impact upon your blog. Like in most things in SEO - moderation is the key.
7. Choose your domain name wisely - there are numerous factors to keep in mind when selecting a domain name. For one you might like to include your keyword in it if possible. Secondly you should do a little research to see if someone else has previously used the domain. This could have both positive and negative impact. If it was a quality site with inbound links you might reap some benefits but if it was a banned spam site you could still be banned from Google for a long time. One service you might want to use to check expired domains is Way Back Machine at Archive.org.
8. Register your Domain for a Lengthy Period - a recent patent by Google indicates that it now looks at the length of your domain’s registration in ranking it. It does this because many spam sites have short registrations and a longer one indicates that you’re building a site with substance and are in it for the long haul.
9. One topic per post - the more tightly focused the theme of a page the better when Search Engines come to rank it. Sometimes you might find yourself writing long posts that end up covering a number of different topics. They might relate loosely but if search engine ranking is what you’re after it could be better to break up your post into smaller more focused pieces.
10. Write optimal length posts - there is some thought going around the Search Engine Optimization community that pages that are too short can get passed over for high rankings. I try to keep posts at least 250 words. Of course there are some posts on my blogs that are shorter, but if I’m writing a post that I want to rank well I try to give it some meatiness in terms of length. On the other hand don’t make it too long either - because in doing so you make it difficult to keep your keyword density up and could end up with a less tightly focused page. Research also shows that longer articles can have a pretty steep drop off rate in readers after the text gets below the ‘fold’ or to the end of the first screen of article .
11. Avoid Duplicate content - Google warns publishers in its guidelines about having the same content on multiple pages. This goes for both multiple pages that you own but also pages that others own. This is because a tactic of spammers is often to reproduce content on many pages and/or to steel content from other sites. There is some debate over what duplicate content does and doesn’t include (for instance many bloggers use ‘free articles’ as content on their blogs - these articles often appear on hundreds and even thousands of other sites around the web and to me could be seen as duplicate content) - my advice is to be very careful about how many places your content appears. I do republish occasional posts (or parts of them) but try not to do this too much and attempt to add elements that are unique on each occasion that the posts are republished).
12. Ping - services like Pingomatic (there are numerous others too) will ping a variety of websites for you to notify them that you’ve updated. In doing so you’ll also be letting search engines know that you’ve updated which will trigger their robots to come visit your blog. I’d also suggest pinging Google’s blog search tool.
13. Submit your RSS to MyYahoo - submitting your RSS feed to MyYahoo seems to help with getting indexed on Yahoo. Read more about this at Getting Yahoo Traffic for your Blog. Some also think that doing the same thing to Google’s Personalised pages could have a similar impact.
14. Quantities of Content - I always get into trouble when I write about having lots of content - but I think its true that bigger sites tend to rank better than smaller sites - whilst it is possible to rank highly with a small site - it’s probably not the norm.. Search Engines will see your site as more comprehensive the more content you have. You also better your odds of being found in Search Engines if you have more pages. By no means am I saying just to put up random junk content - be careful about this - rather work at building a comprehensive and large site over time.
15. Submit to Search Engines - You can do all the best onsite SEO strategies in the world and still get no where because the Search Engines have not found you to start with. Each search engine has a way of letting it know about your site - submit your URL to be included in the index. Please note that this takes time and perhaps a quicker and more effective way is to get linked to by a site already indexed by the search engine. I’ve written a post about his previously here.
You might also like to tryout some of the services around that offer to submit your sites to search engines for you - I’d be wary of paying for this sort of service though. I never have and seem to do ok.
Again I will reinforce - the above techniques come out of my own experience and from the things I’ve learnt from others. I am not an SEO expert but find that if you keep the above in mind you can do reasonably well. Don’t become obsessed by SEO - if you do you run the risk of forgetting about your reader, forgetting to write quality content and you could find yourself getting into some dodgy SEO tactics that could get you banned from the Search Engines You’re trying to get listed in.
I’ll finish here by adding that SEO can take time - so be patient. After 2.5 years of blogging I’ve managed to build my blogs page ranks and SERPs but it did not happen over night. Sometimes it seems that no matter what you do nothing works - it may be that the words you’re wanting to target are actually a heavily targeted segment of the internet (consider changing your approach) - or it may just be that there is some unknowable glitch with the SE you are targeting - its a fickle game and one that I’d recommend you don’t rely on alone. So yes work on your SEO but also consider the many other methods around to find readers for your blog. You might like to read my Finding Readers for your Blog Series as a starting point.
Feel free to have your say on the topic of SEO and blogging below - share your comments, experiences and questions for the ProBlogger community to interact with.

Search Engine Optimization for Blogs - SEO

The following is a compiled version of my recent Search Engine Optimization Tips for Blogs series (part of the 31 Days to building a better blog project) It has been edited slightly for the purposes of keeping it flowing as one article.
Search Engine Optimization is something that makes many blogger’s heads spin - I know this because every time I write an SEO article I get comments from bloggers telling me that its too big a topic and that they’d rather just write ‘quality content’.
Whilst I’ll never argue that quality content should be anything but a first priority in blogging, the fact is that there are many millions of pages of great writing languishing around at the bottom of search engines results pages that deserve to be read by many but which rarely see the light of day because their authors have failed to understand that just a few simple tweaks in the writing process could see them ranking considerably higher.
So it’s time for another series - this time on Search Engine Optimization for Blogs!
People often ask me ‘how do I get ranked number one in (((insert favourite search engine here)))?
My answer usually starts with - ‘I don’t really know what I’m talking about….but….’
You see whilst some of my blogs rank very highly on different search engines - I often don’t really know why. Much of what I do is educated guessing and experimentation. I do read a lot of other people’s advice on the topic, but the more I read the more I realize that I’m not alone in my guess work - virtually every article I read is a ‘best guess’ of some kind.
My main advice to people wanting to optimize their blogs for Search Engines is to keep it simple. Start with quality content on a specific topic and then tweak it using the best current advice going around.
When I think about SEO for my blogs I tend to divide the things I focus upon into two parts - offsite and onsite search engine optimization techniques. Offsite techniques are more about what others do on their websites in linking to you, onsite techniques you have more control over as you write.
Off Site SEO Techniques
Off site SEO techniques are as the name suggests factors from outside the site itself (ie from other sites) that impact the blog’s ranking in search engines. Many of these factors are outside the blogger’s control - however they are useful to know. The most obvious and probably most powerful offsite factor are Inbound Links (something I’ve already referred to above).
It is generally agreed that the links that point to a website are one of the most powerful way of climbing Search Engines results pages (in fact many argue it is THE most important factor). - To put it most simply - every link to your site is seen by the search engines as being a vote of confidence in your site.
Ideally Speaking - The best inbound links have three main qualities to them:
they are from higher ranked sites than your own they are relevant to the topic you are writing about they link to you using relevant keywords to your page Whilst you may not have complete control over who links to you these are the types of links that you should be dreaming of.
How to generate quality inbound Links?
Of course whilst most of us know this it doesn’t make getting such links any easier - its in the hands of others in many cases. So how do you get such links?
Quality Content - There are all kinds of link generating systems out there but in my opinion the best way to get links to your blog is to write quality content that people will want to read. You can solicit links with others or sign up for different link building programs or even buy text links on other sites but the cheapest and probably safest approach is to build inbound links in a natural organic way as others link to your quality content. Notify Relevant Bloggers of your content - Whilst I don’t advocate spamming other bloggers and asking for links - I would recommend that if you write a quality post on a topic that you know will interest another blogger that it might be worth shooting them a short and polite email letting them know of your post. Don’t be offended if they don’t link up, but you might just find that they do and that in addition to the direct traffic that the link generates that it helps build your own page rank in the search engines (more on letting other bloggers know of your posts here). Directories - Another way to generating inbound links is to submit your links to directories. I know of webmasters who swear by the benefits of such a strategy - the first thing that they do when starting a new site is to do the rounds of directories - submitting links to key pages with appropriate keywords in the links. There are loads of directories out there - many of which offer a free submission. Ari Paparo has compiled a list of blog directories that you might want to start with. Inter-link your Blogs - Increasingly bloggers are starting or joining blog networks to enjoy the benefits of multiple sites and writers working together. One of the advantages of networks of sites is that they usually link to one another. In doing so you have complete control over how your sites are linked to from multiple domains. It is worth noting that you should be careful with this approach - if all your sites are hosted on the one server many think that Search Engines will work out what you’re doing and the impact will be lessened. Buy Links - Many professional web masters have a budget to purchase links from other highly ranked and and relevant sites. I won’t go into this too much here but you might like to read more about it in my recent post On Buying Text Links. Swap Links - Similarly many bloggers swap links with other bloggers. Sometimes this happens pretty naturally (you see someone linking to you so you link back) but in many cases the links are strategic ones and formally arranged between site owners. I get daily requests for such reciprocal links (I rarely act on them). Whilst there is some benefit in such link swapping I would again advise caution here as many SEO experts believe that the search engines have methods for tracking such strategies and devaluing the links. Some try to get around this by doing indirect or triangulated links. ie instead of site A and B doign a direct swap they involve other sites. So A links to C in exchange for D (also owned by C) linking to B (also owned by A) - makes your head hurt doesn’t it!?! There are also a variety of systems around that say they’ll take care of such interlinking for you - I know many who use Digital Point’s Free C0-Op Advertising system. Personally I tend to avoid such schemes and have a policy of linking to sites I think are valuable to my readers. If they link back then so be it.

The Most Important Tip For Better Writing

Glen Stansberry is the author of the blog LifeDev (feed). Check out LifeDev for other tips about productivity and life improvement.
I’m going to let you in on a little secret: Becoming a better writer is the best thing you can do to improve your blog’s readership and traffic. Not how many buttons you have for easy submission to social services, not detailed SEO optimization, and certainly not gimmicky headlines that are created to tempt potential readers into reading your article. All of these things do have some effect on getting people to your blog, but if they don’t like what they’re reading, they’re sure-as-shootin’ not going to come back. It’s all about the content.
Good writers have an advantage on traffic because their readers come back every time they write a new article. Many blog readers are also bloggers, so they in turn link to the posts. The more links a blog has, the higher its posts rank in search engines, and the blog receives even more traffic. Not only that, compelling content gives readers a reason to submit to social sites like Digg and Del.icio.us (regardless of whether or not you have those handy buttons).
So how does one define a good writer? At the very least a decent writer can construct sentences that show at least a 3rd grade reading level. (While this is a rather facetious statement, I have come across a couple blogs that don’t meet this standard. Hopefully the authors really were 2nd graders.)Some other things I look for in a good writer:
Great word choice. It’s not how many big words you know, but carefully choosing words that fit perfectly.
Decent grammar. While blogging is a more forgiving medium, proper usage of grammar still shows masterful writing.
The ability to make me laugh out loud. There are a few writers who can do this, and it’s a huge draw for me.
There are a few other undefined variables that go into being a great blogger, but really it’s just something the reader can sense. So how does one improve on all of these aspects of better writing?
Really, the answer is painfully simple:
Read other great writers.
That’s it. There’s no magic involved here. The more great writing you can soak up everyday, the more your writing will improve.
Sure, one could take a writing class to improve their writing chops. But how much do you remember from your English education in high school or college? I can’t remember hardly anything except funny words like “dangling modifier”. (That one gets me every time.) I do remember great writing though.
So to get us started, here are a few great writers that I read frequently

Reading more high-caliber bloggers is one of the most effective ways to improve your writing. What you read shapes how you write. If you read better blogs, you’ll start to see immediate results in your own writing. And it’s a lot more fun than learning about misplaced modifiers and past participles!

5 Tips for Improving AdSense Referrals Earnings

How do you get more readers to click through and sign up to referrals?
Here are five tips that I’ve used:
1. Give a RecommendationOne of the differences between the AdSense referral program and their normal advertising program is that you can actively promote and encourage readers to click your referral links. This is because you don’t get paid per click but only when the reader meets the required action. So no one is out of pocket if you encourage your readers to click or label the buttons as recommendations. In fact if you do recommend the product (genuinely) you’ll increase your chances of conversion as you’re really pre-selling the product (and all affiliate or CPA programs work best with some pre-selling).
2.Relevancy is KeyThe only reason that AdWords and AdSense referrals work reasonably for me is that my blog is on the topic of making money online. If I were to put them on any of the other blogs I’m involved with the conversion would be terrible. I’d steer clear of the program altogether unless you have readers who would naturally be interested in the topic.
3. Use Your Allowance of Two Referrals a PageGoogle recently changed the rules to allow publishers to use two referral links per page instead of the previously allowed single link. I have one text link positioned at the bottom of individual posts and one in my sidebar (for AdSense). I find that the ones at the bottom of posts work best.

4. Use a Pre-Sell pageOne of the problems with the AdSense referrals program is that the text links are difficult to incorporate into a post. They are not html but are a script and you are hampered in changing the wording of how the link appears. Also if you’re already using your two links on the one page (like I am) you can’t put a third link into your post. The way I get around this is to have an AdSense ‘pre-sell’ page. On this page I simply explain what AdSense is, share how it works for me and include a button to sign up for it. I can’t tell you the exact CTR on this page but it’s over 400 times better than the CTR on either of the other links appearing on my blog! Whether this converts to signups I’m unsure as AdSense don’t allow us to track signups on a channel by channel basis (and I’ve only used this pre-sell page for a month now so it’s too early to tell if it leads to readers getting to the threshold at a higher rate than the other buttons).
5. Help Your Readers Meet ThresholdsLastly, consider how you might help those who do click through to meet the conversion thresholds. This is why on my Pre-Sell page I also have a link to my AdSense Tips pages which will help those starting out with AdSense to perform better (earning both them and me more money).

Do AdSense Referrals Work?

Today’s reader question is - ‘I would like to know your views on Google referral ads. Do you make money out of them, or is it something to run away from?’ - submitted by gabo_uy.
Google AdSense Referrals are the CPA ads (cost per action) from the popular AdSense service. At the time of writing this they have four products for their publishers to choose from (AdSense itself, AdWords, Google Pack and Firefox plus Google Toolbar). Putting it most simply - if a reader makes that you send to one of these services does a certain thing (they are different in each case) you then get paid a certain amount.

For example if I refer someone to the Firefox plus Google Toolbar and they actually download and use it I get paid $1. If someone someone downloads and installs the Google Pack I get $2. If someone signs up for AdWords and spends $5 within 90 days as an advertiser I get $5 etc (full details of what you can earn for different conversions here).
So onto gabo_uy’s question - do I make money from the Google referral program?
There’s a short answer and a long one.
The short answerYes I make money from the Google AdSense Referral Program.
The long answerI’ve had very mixed success with AdSense Referrals.
I’ve attempted to promote all four of their products (in fact there used to be a fifth - the Picassa photosharing service) and the only two that I’ve had returns on that have amounted to anything are the AdSense and AdWords programs.
I’m not sure I can give specific details of my conversions on the referrals program - but let me make these observations on my own earnings: