A Great Idea Is Not Enough For Your Blog
Published February 27, 2010 | 
Because there are so many blogs and web sites about every niche on the internet, it can be tough to distinguish your blog from all of the other sites out there. Whether you are starting up a new web site aimed at a specific niche or whether you are looking to make your existing blog site more distinctive, the key to building and maintaining a site that will capture the interest and attention of your readers is finding your niche. If you can fill a unique need in a way that no other web site does, you’ll be able to build a lasting readership among web surfers. Once you have discovered your niche, you will still have a lot to do, but finding your place in the blogosphere is the place to begin.
Every great blogging web site starts with a great idea, and you can’t build a successful site that will last without one. There are many great sites aimed at a multitude of niches, and competition for the attention of this growing demographic is fierce. To make your blog stand out from the pack, you will need to offer something that no other site is currently offering, or you will need to do the same thing that an already popular site does but in a more impressive or valuable way. How you package your ideas can be a big determining factor in whether your blog succeeds or fails.
One way to discover an ideal model for your blog is to look at the sites that have successfully captured an audience already to determine if you can appropriate some of their strategies to help realize your vision. Of course, you will also need to add a unique flair to your project in order to stand apart from your competition. Many people agree that the web sites that do the best in today’s market are the sites that have the most personality. The fiercely individual surfers are a demographic that responds especially strongly to personality, so consider how you can give your site a unique and attractive feeling by lending your own voice and sensibility to your site’s design and content.
Once you have a great idea for your site, have pinpointed a special niche that you are well equipped to fill, and have infused the site with personality, the next step is figuring out how to get the word out to your potential readers. In the long run, a great idea just isn’t enough to propel your blog site to success. You will need to draft a smart and realistic marketing plan in order to draw readers to your site. Once you hook a reader, your great content will keep them coming back for more, but it is vital to get that first glance or your site won’t ever have a chance to shine.
5 Reasons Why a Blog is a Great Internet Marketing Tool
Published February 26, 2010 | Blogging is a concept that started in late 90s. It used to be a way to comment on an existing webpage, an opportunity for visitors and readers to react or voice out their opinions on the page. What started as a single-sentence commentary has evolved into pages of personal take on just about anything and everything under the sun. As it continues to move forward, online advertising has tapped into the blogs potential. Here are 5 reasons why you should use blogging as an Internet marketing tool.
- Blogging is simple. The simplest way to get your piece on the net is through blogging. No skills are necessary… an average adult can read and type, or at least click a mouse. It’s like having a virtual piece of paper and you just write your ideas, experiences, new products, and hope that the truth behind your articles comes out and entices your reader to also buy your product. If you have a PC and an Internet connection (who doesn’t these days?) then you can blog and advertise.
- Blogging is authentic. In this day and age of advertising, we are saturated by product promotion and tend to question everything that is thrown in our face. In blogs, people tell their stories (pitch their products) as more of a real life experience, giving the pitch more credibility. Reading a blog post about first-hand user experience with a producr is nearly as good as you calling up your best friend to tell them about the latest greatest gadget you just found. People are more likely to buy a tried and tested product.
- Blogging is free. Although I prefer self-hosted blog accounts with WordPress installed, I do still use a couple of free blogs. Most of the free sites don’t consider blog as a mainstream advertising medium, so they continue to allow free accounts. A word of warning… Some of the free blogging services are starting to inspect blogs more closely and close the ones that are just pitching products. You must provide good free content if you want to keep them around. With all of that said, any time you can get free website space; go for it. You will have more flexibility and probably make more money with a self-hosted blog, though.
- Blogging builds credibility in your niche. As you get deeper and deeper into writing about your particular niche, your readers will come to realize that they can depend on you for their own information needs. As such, you become an expert in your niche. As an expert, more bloggers link to your posts. This al drives more traffic to your site through referrals and search engines. Your ad rates will increase and you will make more money from your blog.
- Blogging builds your market. Unless you are already a celebrity, chances are the only ones that will be reading a new blog are your friends and family. Sure they may send some of their friends your way, but you shouldn’t depend on them to build your readerships base. Here are a few ways to build your market through your blog:
- Join a blog network. Joining a network not only allows you to interact with other bloggers, but will also get you a few curious readers who will then recommend your site to others. Many, like Yahoo’s MyBlogLog service allow you to create user groups for your blogs. Usually if you make a contact and join one of their groups, they’ll reciprocate and join yours.
- Comment on other peoples blogs in your niche. This will give you backlinks to your site that will increase your search engine rankings. If the comment makes a good point, you might even pick up a few readers who have read your comment. The blog owner may also take a look at your page and link to or comment on some of your posts.
- Understand your readers. Get to know what information they want to read about. WordPress has a poll plug-in that you can add to your blog and ask your readers what they think. Tweet about the poll on twitter. People like to express their opinions and you will pick up a few new readers fro them voting on the poll and when they come back in s few days or hours to check the results. Knowing what the reader wants will help you to generate more useful content and make the likelyhood of them sharing your site with others much higher.
- Add a social bookmarking bar to all of your posts. WordPress has many options for this. If the option is there, they are more likely to share a post than if it wasn’t there. They may think about it and not get around to it when they log into Digg, or Facebook or whatever. If the link is right there in front of them it makes it easy for them to share it.
- Use a subscription. Add a form to where your readers can subscribe to your blog. If you don’t want to maintain a mailing list, at least provide a link to the RSS feed where they can get notifications when a new post is up. WordPress automatically pings your post, so if someone has your RSS feed in their bookmarks the post will be available to them within minutes (sometimes seconds) of you publishing it.
Using your blog as a tool for internet marketing is really a no brainer. Any time that you can get more eyes to read what you have to say about your niche market is a good thing. It builds credibility and makes it all that much easier to sell them on your product or service at a later time.
Why Do You Blog?
Published February 25, 2010 | Are you blogging for fun or for money? Do you want to do both? I have blogs that are in place for many reasons.
I have a couple of blogs that are filled with tales of some of my outlandish activities and are my release. They are very entertaining for my readers (mostly my friends). These sites don’t make me much money… Maybe a few cents each month from the ads on them, but they are my “fun” blogs.
I have several blogs that are there to provide information to support a web property and drive traffic to it in hopes that the readers will join the site. These blogs not only provide me with a way to generate traffic, but are also full of great content that is beneficial to the reader.
The traffic for these blogs is considerably higher than my personal sites. The ad revenue amounts to a several dollars per month on each, but the number of subscribers I receive and the number of sales that I make from those readers make blogging on them very worthwhile.
The third type of blog that can be used is a review site blog. In these, the blog author writes articles that endorse a product that they are an affiliate for. These can be tricky, because you want your reader to genuinely believe that you are reviewing the product, not trying to sell them something.
Many people believe that since blogging is fun and easy, that making money from their blog is a slam dunk! All they have to do is set up the site and add some good content and the money will start rolling in. Although this is true, to a certain extent, many bloggers fail to make a decent living doing it.
Many people who are starting out in internet marketing think that to make a lot of mone through blogging, all they need to do is set it up and add content regularly. You may make a few bucks a month doing this but you will need to do more than that to make a living from your blog(s).
When setting up your blog here are a few tips to get them making you money:
- Place ads on them. Google’s Adsense program works fine for some, but there are other ad networks that give you different options and, although paying less per click than Google, can make you more money. You can also use cost per action (CPA) ads, where you don’t make revenue from impressions or clicks but only when the reader takes a certain action like signing up for a new credit card or buying a product.
- Creat your own products or services that you can offer for sale through your blog. I mentioned earlier about the blogs that I use to support some of my other sites. I post regularly to them and keep them being indexed in the search engines which drives traffic to them. The traffic increases my ad revenue. If they buy my product or sign-up for my mailing list, I make even more money from them.
- Selling affiliate products through a blog is another way to make a decent amount of cash. Setting the site up as a review for products from Clickbank or PayDotCom or other affiliate programs (eBay, Amazon, etc.) can be a cash cow that keeps paying you for years to come off very few posts. Or you can just place banners for affiliate products that are related to your niche on your site. Many of these affiliate products will pay 50% or more from any sale that you generate from your link.
In conclusion, blogging can be a fun and easy way to make money online. It may take a little work to get things set up the first time around, but soon you’ll be turning out sites that start making you money from the first day.
Check back soon. I’ll be covering ideas to make your blog-life more simple and how to drive tons of traffic to them through social marketing sites like Twitter and Facebook.
