Tricks to Use Keywords in Your Blog Posts

One of the biggest sources of traffic to your blog will be search engines, particularly Google.  You can boost the traffic that comes to your blogs from search engines by implementing search engine optimization (SEO) tricks into your blog layout and writing.  You can get started by doing some keyword research and determining which keywords are likely to drive the most traffic to your blog.  Then focus on incorporating those keywords into your blog posts using the tricks below.

1. Use keywords in your blog post title.

One of the best ways to incorporate keywords into your blog posts is to use them in your blog post titles.  However, don’t sacrifice a title’s ability to motivate people to click through and read your entire blog post.  Learn Tips for Great Blog Post Titles.

2. Focus on using just one or two keyword phrases in each blog post.

To maximize the traffic that comes to your blog via search engines, focus on optimization each of your blog posts for just one or two keyword phrases.  Too many keyword phrases dilutes the content of your post for readers and can look like spam to both readers and search engines.  You can learn more about using specific keywords to maximize search traffic by reading about long tail search engine optimization.

3. Use keywords throughout your blog posts.

Try to use your keywords (without keyword stuffing) multiple times in your blog post.  For best results, use your keywords within the first 200 characters of your blog post, several times throughout your post, and near the end of the post.  Take some time to learn more about keyword stuffing and other search engine optimization don’ts.

4. Use keywords in and around links in your blog post.

Search engine optimization experts believe that search engines like Google place more weight on linked text than unlinked text when ranking search engine results.  Therefore, it’s a good idea to include your keywords in or next to the links within your blog posts when it’s relevant to do so.  Be sure to read about how many links are too many for SEO before you start adding links to your posts.

5. Use keywords in image Alt-tags.

When you upload an image to your blog to use in your blog post, you usually have the option of adding alternate text for that image which appears if a visitor cannot load your images in their Web browsers.  However, this alternate text, can also help your search engine optimization efforts.  That’s because the alternate text appears within the HTML of your blog post content as something called an Alt-tag.  Google and other search engines crawl that tag and use it in providing results for keyword searches.  Take the time to add keywords that are relevant to the image and post in the Alt-tag for each image you upload and publish on your blog.

Know About – What is Blog Post

Introduction to a Blog Post:

A blog post is the most important part of your blog. Your posts are the entries that take up at least 75% of the screen space on your blog’s site. Blog posts appear in reverse chronological order, so your blog stays timely, fresh and meaningful to visitors. It’s your current content (in the form of blog posts) that will keep readers coming back to your blog again and again to read what you have to say about your blog’s topic.

The Blog Post Title:

The title of your post is basically a headline. It is meant to lure readers in and entice them to read more. At the same time, blog titles are a useful tool in terms of search engine optimization. Search engines value titles strongly in ranking results and using popular keywords in your blog titles can help drive traffic to your blog. Just be careful to use keywords that are relevant to your blog post’s content else your title could be considered spam by search engines and negatively affect the traffic sent to your blog.

Blog Post Publication Date:

Since blogs are most successful when they are updated frequently and provide timely content, readers will check the publication dates of your posts to determine the value of your blog. Blog posts that are published erratically with long gaps of time between posts are typically considered to be less valuable than blogs that offer more current and consistent posts.

Blog Post Author Byline:

The blog post’s author byline is important to identify who wrote each post and is particularly important for blogs that are written by multiple authors. Furthermore, the author byline typically provides a link to your About Me page, which provides additional promotion for you and your blog.

Images in Blog Posts:

Images provide more than just color and visual relief from text heavy web pages on a blog. They also act as another way you can drive traffic to your blog. Many people perform keyword searches through search engines for the purpose of finding images and pictures online. By strategically naming the images you use in your blog posts to match relevant keyword searches, you can drive some of that image search traffic to your blog. Just make sure the images you use enhance your blog rather than detract from your blog and confuse your readers.

Links and Trackbacks in Blog Posts:

Most blog posts include links within the content of the post. Those links are used for two purposes. First, links are used to cite an original source of information or an idea used in a blog post or to provide additional information beyond the scope of your post. Second, they provide a breadcrumb trail and a tap on the shoulder to bloggers whose posts you are linking to in the form of a trackback. A trackback generates a link on the blog you’re linking to in your post, which acts as an additional source of traffic to your blog as readers on that blog are likely to click on the trackback link and find your blog.

Blog Post Comment Section:

Aside from your blog post content, blog comments are the most important part of your blog. Comments are where your readers have an opportunity to join the conversation. It’s essential to the success of your blog that you respond to the comments left by your readers to show you value them and to further build the two-way conversation on your blog and the sense of community your blog creates.

 

Tips for Great Blog Post Titles

Writing blog post titles that get attention and traffic is a unique form of writing, because you write blog post titles for multiple reasons. First, you want people to be intrigued enough to feel compelled to read the actual blog post. Second, you don’t want to trick anyone by writing a title that is irrelevant to your blog post content. Third, you want your blog post to help drive search engine traffic, so you need to focus on keywords when you come up with your blog post titles. That’s a hefty list, but you can meet all three goals when you write blog post titles following the steps below.

 

1. Pique Curiousity and Get Attention

Your blog post titles should be interesting. They should intrigue readers enough to make them want to click on the link to your post and keep reading it. That’s not to say that straightforward titles aren’t effective. They are! However, you need to have a mix of creative and intuitive post titles to get the best of both worlds.

2. Avoid Bait and Switch

You don’t want to be accused of tricking people into reading your blog post based on the title and then have them be disappointed in the actual content they find within the post. That can do more harm to your blog than good. If you bait them in your blog post title, you need to be sure that you deliver the content they’re looking for within your post content.

3. Consider Search Engine Optimization

Writing blog post titles to maximize keywords and search engine optimization (SEO) is a great way to boost your blog’s incoming traffic from Google and other search engines. If you can marry a creative headline with a search engine optimized headline, then you’ve hit the jackpot! Just remember not to stuff irrelevant keywords into your blog post titles!

 

Know About – What is Google Blogger?

Blogger is Google’s free tool for creating blogs. It can be found on the web at http://www.blogger.com.

Blogs, short for web-logs, are a form of online journal.

Getting Started With Blogger

You can use blogs for everything from updating your friends and family about your life, giving your own advice column, discussing your political views, or relating your experience in a topic of interest. You can host blogs with multiple contributors, or you can run your own solo show. You can even use Blogger to make your own podcast feeds.

Although there are fancier blog tools out there, the mixture of cost (free) and flexibility makes Blogger one of the best deals around.

 

Setting Up Your Blog

Setting up a Blogger account takes three easy steps. Create an account, name your blog, and choose a template. You can host multiple blogs with the same account name, so you only need to do that part once. This way you could separate your professional blog about your business from your personal blog about dogs, for instance.

Hosting Your Blog

Blogger will host your blog for free on blogspot.com. You can also use Blogger to automatically ftp your blog posts to your own web space. Make sure you have the correct server settings from your internet service provider, otherwise you may have unpredictable results.

Posting

Once your blog is set up, Blogger has a basic WYSIWYG editor. (What you see is what you get) This is not necessarily a bad thing. Most blogging tools do not have robust html editors, and the ones that do often require java or other plug-ins.If you need more formatting options and a larger window, you can use Google Docs to post to your Blogger blog. You could also do advanced editing with HTML. Blogger has an HTML tab to let you do this directly, although it does not allow JavaScript.

Email Your Posts

You can optionally configure Blogger with a secret email address, so you can email your posts to your blog. This is handy for making updates on the fly or updating from your cell phone or other mobile device.

Pictures

Blogger will let you upload pictures from your desktop and post them to your blog. You can choose the basic layout and size of your images, and they’ll be uploaded to Bloggers’s server space, so you don’t have to host the pictures on a different website.

That doesn’t mean you can’t post with pictures that you’ve hosted elsewhere on the Web. You can also use Picasa Web Albums to post pictures to your blog.

Google Video and YouTube videos can similarly be directly linked into your blog posts.

Know About – What is a Blog?

Blog Definition:

A blog (also called a weblog or web log) is a website consisting of entries (also called posts) appearing in reverse chronological order with the most recent entry appearing first (similar in format to a daily journal). Blogs typically include features such as comments and links to increase user interactivity. Blogs are created using specific publishing software.

Variations of the term blog:

  • Blogging: The act of writing a post for a blog
  • Blogger: A person who writes content for a blog
  • Blogosphere: The online community of blogs and bloggers

The World Before Blogging:



There was a time when the Internet was just an informational tool. In the early life of the World Wide Web some 20 years ago, websites were simple and provided a one-sided conversation. As time went on, the Internet became more interactive with the introduction of transaction-based websites and online shopping, but the online world remained one-sided.

That all changed with the evolution of Web 2.0 (the social web) wherein user-generated content became an integral part of the online world. Today, users expect websites to provide a two-way conversation and web logs (or blogs) were born.

The Birth of Blogs:

The earliest blogs started in the late 1990s as online diaries. Individuals posted information on a daily basis about their lives and opinions. The daily posts were listed in reverse date order, so readers viewed the most recent post first and scrolled through previous posts. The format provided an ongoing inner monologue from the writer.

As blogs evolved, interactive features were added to create a two-way conversation. Readers took advantage of features that allowed them to leave comments on blog posts or link to posts on other blogs and websites to further the dialogue.

Blogs Today:

As the Internet has become more social, blogs have gained in popularity. Today, there are over 100 million blogs with more entering the blogosphere everyday. Blogs have become more than online diaries. In fact, blogging has become an important part of the online and offline worlds with popular Bloggers impacting the worlds of Politics, Business and society with their words.

The Future of Blogs:

It seems inevitable that blogging will become even more powerful in the future with more people and businesses recognizing the power of bloggers as online influencers. Anyone can start a blog thanks to the simple (and often free) tools readily available online. The question will likely become not, “Why should I start a blog?” but rather, “Why shouldn’t I start a blog?”

Add an Facebook Pop-Up Box for Blogger blogs

Facebook is an platform of millions of users today, Facebook “LIKE” have become one of the powerful tool for webmasters to promote their blog or website. The logic is very simple, whenever a person likes a link, that link will get published on this Facebook wall and catches eyes of thousands of  his/her friends in a single moment and brings curiosity in them to click on your link. The tactic here is your link gets a chain connection and it will get disposed to thousands of users at a single moment so Facebook like can be preferred as an most powerful tool for bloggers. Today i will help you in implementing a Facebook like box with pop up feature on your blog apart from implementing a simple Facebook like Box, which can motivate max number of your viewers to like your blog on Facebook.

Facebook Pop Up box for blogger blogs



1. Create an Facebook Fan Page.

2. Paste your Facebook Page Url In The Box Provided Below.

3. Click On Add To Blogger Button.

 

Enter Your Facebook Page URL : 

 

 

You Like It!? Then kindly share with your Friends.

30+ Essential WordPress Plugins

WordPress Plugin: A WordPress Plugin is a program, or a set of one or more functions, written in the PHP scripting language, that adds a specific set of features or services to the WordPress weblog, which can be seamlessly integrated with the weblog using access points and methods provided by the WordPress Plugin Application Program Interface (API).

There are tons of WordPress plugins out there. Some of them can be really helpful, while others are just a waste of disk space. Let’s take a look at 32 really useful WordPress plugins and why you should use them.

1. Google XML Sitemaps

2. All in One SEO Pack

3. WordPress Database Backup

4. Contact Form 7

5. Google Analytics for WordPress

6. Broken Link Checker

7. WP e-Commerce

8. ShareThis

9. Redirection

10. Related Posts Plugin nrelate

11.  Scroll popup html content ads

12. Get Recent Comments

13. Akismet

14. WP lightbox 2

15. Ultimate Tag Warrior 3

16. My Page Order

17. Adsense-Deluxe

18. Search Regex Plugin

19. Tweetmeme

20. WP-SpamFree Anti-Spam

21. Theme Authenticity Checker

22. List Category Posts

23. Expanding Text Plugin

24. Actionable

25. Search Everything

26. Sodahead Polls

27. Minimum Comment Length

28. Blogging Tips

29. WP-PageNavi

30. WordPress Super Cache

31. WPtouch: WordPress on iPhone, iPod & Android

32. Custom Welcome Message to new visitors

How To Start Making Money Online

Making money online is not as difficult as some people may think, but making a substantial ongoing income online is actually pretty difficult. This is especially true if you are just starting out and aren’t sure what the best way to get started is. Keep in mind that most methods for making an online income will take a bit of time and/or money to gain traction. Also, you should be aware that there really are no quick and easy shortcuts to making money on the internet. It may take anywhere from a few months to a year before you begin to see substantial results.

While there are a number of different ways to make money online including article marketing, social media marketing, PPC (Pay per Click), etc, there are two main ways that I recommend to get started making money online:

1. Make Money With Affiliate Marketing: This means choosing the best affiliate programs or offers with high conversion rates. This would include joining the affiliate programs of popular sites like eBay, Amazon, Clickbank and Google Adsense.

2. Make Money With PTC (Paid To Click) Sites: A PTC site is a website that pays its members for the ads they click and view, on a daily basis. Popular and trusted PTC sites include ADFLY, LINKBUCKS, Neobux, Clixsense and GetBuxToday.

I have written a fairly comprehensive guide to earning money with PTC Sites and you can download it for free here.

Getting Started

With either of these methods there are only three things that you need to get started making money: A domain name, a web hosting account and an auto responder.

Domain Name

To get started the first thing that I would recommend is to register a domain name. I personally use NameCheap. I would suggest using a registrar that is separate from your hosting company. The reason that I recommend keeping your hosting and domain registrar separate is so that you can switch to a new hosting company easily if you ever find a better deal on a hosting package.

Web Hosting

Next, you will want to go to Hostgator and get a basic web hosting account. You will want to get a plan that will allow you to have an unlimited number of domains, and this should cost you around $5.00 per month. I use WordPress as the content management system for all of my sites, and if you purchase your hosting account through Hostgator, it’s really easy to set up. Just go to the “Fantastico” link on your control panel and create a new WordPress install

If you are working on a really tight budget, you can get started by using a site like Weebly to create a website for free. As soon as you can afford it however I would recommend paying the few extra dollars each month for hosting and you can have full control of your site with no banners or ads.

Autoresponders

What exactly is an autoresponder?  Basically, it is a program that enables you to automatically send emails to people (your leads). Now an autoresponder will not compose emails for you and it doesn’t involve spam or sending unsolicited email. What it will do is allow you to set up a sequence of pre-written emails that are sent out to the prospects in your database at regular, frequent intervals.

The importance of having a reliable autoresponder cannot be underestimated. As you go along in your internet marketing career, you will hear all of the internet marketing gurus tell you that the money is in the list. There is a good reason for this. Online marketing specialists know this to be a fact: The more prospects (leads) that you have on your mailing list that are interested in your products or services, the more sales you will make.

 

 

How To Submit Your Website On Google, Bing & Yahoo search engine

How do I submit and get my web pages to appear on the search engine results pages?

It is vitally important to get your website listed on the major search engines such as Google because it is by far the best way of attracting free, targeted traffic to your site. This website gets most of its traffic from the search engines who send visitors to our web pages.

In this post, we’ll be looking at how to submit your site to each of the major search engines and learn what they look for on your web pages to help you rank higher. Knowing this will enable you to improve your content and overall website by implementing some search engine optimization (SEO) methods.

How Do Search Engines Rank Your Site?

Now, before we look at how you go about submitting your website to the major search engines, it’s important that you learn the fundamentals of what they look for when ranking your website/blog. The higher you rank on Google, Bing & Yahoo, the more traffic you will receive. But being listed doesn’t necessarily mean you will attract traffic, you need to optimize your site for the search engines to ‘see’ you properly.

Every search engine works differently from one another. This is because each uses its own unique algorithms to rank web pages. Generally, these take into account your; Page Title, Meta Description, Keywords within your content, Number of Inbound Links, Bounce Rate, etc. Don’t worry, it’s actually a lot less complicated than it sounds.

As I say, each search engine is different. One may prioritise the number of people linking to your page, where as another may look more favourably towards Targeted Keyword usage. I wouldn’t worry too much about which aspect is more important, as long as you know the general features that the search engines look for, you can optimize your web pages to rank higher.

Read our post on ‘On-Page SEO Techniques‘ to learn more about what the search engines are looking for on your pages.

Do I Need To Submit My Website To Search Engines?

All search engines use programs called ‘Spiders’ to crawl the web. These search the internet for new content, which is then added to their databases/index. When people conduct searches on search engines, the results come from this database, so it is important for your site to be listed on this database.

Technically you don’t need to submit your site to any search engines, as eventually they will find your site by crawling the internet. However, this can take time, time in which you are loosing potential traffic by not being listed. By submitting your site yourself, you speed up the whole process by being automatically added to the search engines database.

Create An XML Sitemap

When search engines crawl individual websites, they look for the site’s ‘Sitemap‘. This is a very basic page that lists all of the URL links of a website. Look at our sitemap for an example.

Search engines use this to see when new content has been added to a website, so it can keep it’s database up to date. So when you publish a new post on your blog, or new page on your website, it appears on your sitemap for the search engines to see.

Now, you could create your own sitemap manually, but that is a lot of hassle. Instead I’d recommend installing the ‘Google XML Sitemaps‘ WordPress plugin.

This plugin will generate a special XML sitemap of all of your website. It supports all kinds of WordPress generated pages as well as custom URLs and it automatically notifies all the major search engines (i.e. Google, Bing, Yahoo) every time you create a new post (you need to sign up first though).

Submit Your Site To Google & Get Ranked

Google is the king of the search engines, it’s the most used site on the planet with billions of searches everyday! This is why if you only end up submitting your site to one search engine, make sure that it is Google.

It’s a pretty straight forward process to submit your site to Google. Sign up with ‘Google Webmaster Tools‘ and you will be able to click on ‘Add Site’. This lets you enter the URL of your website (this just needs to be your homepage, not every page of your site!) which you then submit. To finish the process, you need to ‘Verify Ownership‘ so that Google knows that you and not someone else is trying to sign up to their Webmaster Tools.

To verify your site you need to ‘upload a HTML file to your server‘. This is a unique file from Google that contains a unique ID code that corresponds to your site. Once uploaded, you can verify your site and Google will see that you have added the HTML file.

So now that you have submitted your site to Google, there is one more thing to do and that’s to add your sitemap. On your ‘Webmaster Tools‘ dashboard you should now see your website. If you click onto it, you will be taken to a page showing statistics about your site (this will become more useful when your site starts ranking). Go to; Site Configuration>Sitemaps>Submit a Sitemap and point Google in the direction of your sitemap.

That’s it! Now, when you add new content to your site, your site map will automatically be updated via the ‘Google XML Sitemaps‘ plugin, which will also automatically inform Google that you have new content.

Submit Your Site To Bing/Yahoo & Get Ranked

Bing and Yahoo are search partners, which means that once you set up a Bing ‘Webmaster Tools‘ account and submit your sitemap, you are listed in both Bing and Yahoo’s search database.

This is exactly the same process as before, so it’s pretty straight forward. To begin you will need to sign up to ‘Bing Webmaster’ which is exactly the same Google’s ‘Webmaster Tools.

Once signed up (you can use your existing hotmail login info) you can click on ‘Add Site‘. Add your URL and you will again need to verify that you are the owner of the site. Download the unique HTML file from Bing and upload it to your server, just as you did before, and verify your site.

Lastly, you need to add your sitemap. Click on your website on the Bing dashboard then go to; Crawl>Sitemaps (XML, Atom, RSS)>Add Feed and point Bing in the direction of your sitemap.

Why Only Submit To Google, Yahoo & Bing?

Whilst you can submit your site to other search engines such as; Ask, AOL, MSN Search, etc. the vast majority of traffic comes from the big three; Google, Bing and Yahoo!

Once you start listing in these big three, you will end up being listed on the other search engines anyway.

Next Step – SEO

So, that’s it! You should now be listed on all three of the major search engines. But as I said earlier, that won’t guarantee traffic. You need to optimise your web pages with On-Page SEO techniques to make them rank highly on search engine results pages (SERPs). The higher you can rank, the more traffic you can generate.

12 Ways To Encourage Your Visitors to Stay

We all want more traffic, more loyal readers, and more sales. I know I do. For most of us our blog is the precious stone we chisel our artwork into. We slave over making our website as good as we possibly can and don’t want our work to go unnoticed and unappreciated. I know exactly how you feel and that’s why I’ve put together 12 ways to compel your visitors to stay.

Whether you’re looking to increase your readers loyalty, improve your website’s accessibility and friendliness, or build a community these tips will help you achieve your goals.

1. Simplify your websites navigation – You should focus on the most important elements of your website and display those in your navigation and eliminate the rest.

It can be very confusing and annoying to make visitors click on everything.

Your navigation should give them clear direction to what your site is about and how to navigate it.

2. Choose an engaging color scheme – Your website should have two or three primary colors that stand out.

You want to break your content apart and allow your audience to see your website as different sections of content

Don’t overdo it though. Too many colors can turn visitors away as quickly as it can entice them stay.

3. Use images to break up the content and add personality – Images have a way of speaking to people the way that words never can.

Use images to convey emotion and draw your audience in.

4. Make your websites header (logo) and tagline stand out – It’s one of the first things a visitor sees on your site and can make your site look either professional or glued and pasted together.

Your headline and tagline should be clean and clearly display what your website is about.

5. Add more calls to action – A call to action is simple and often only a sentence long.

Ask people to comment, twitter your post or take some other action.

Whatever you decide to do get them in the habit of taking action.

In fact don’t forget to comment at the end of this post

6. Create strong, emotional headlines – Other than your posts picture your headline is immensely important.

If your posts title doesn’t get any attention readers aren’t likely to click on your little read more icon.

In fact they will probably ignore your post all together.

7 . Simplify your readability – While your content may make perfect sense to you it doesn’t mean your reader gets it.

Most readers want the information they are looking for to be easy to read, highly memorable, and easily accessible.

8. Offer more at the end of your post – Your post was absolutely amazing, now what?

Did you add a related posts section, a call to action or a request to comment?

If you want people to stay engaged give them more of what they want, or they’ll find it somewhere else.

9. Use sub headlines to break up your content – Most readers like to skim content. I know I do, and I bet you’ve done it too.

If your writing a long post or speaking on multiple topics break your content up with bold, larger, or different color sub headlines.

You’ll please the skimmers and the loyal audience, and most likely get more return traffic.

10. Change your content or change your audience – Your content may be great, monumental even, but if your audience isn’t reading it then you may need to change your audience or change your content.

If they’ve already heard your content a million times over by everyone else, then you need to teach it to an audience that hasn’t heard it as much and wants to learn it.

Or create fresh and new content for your existing audience.

The reason teachers have students is because students don’t know as much as their teachers.

If they did then we’d have no schools.

You need to find fresh minds to grow and build relationships with, which brings me to my next tip.

11. Create a monthly post questionnaire – You know it all don’t you? I know I do (just kidding

Writing a post every month or so and asking your audience what’s most important to them will do wonders for your blog or business.

It’s about as direct as you can get.

Ask them to comment about what’s on their minds, what they need the most help with, and what they think you can do better.

It will help you uncover topics, and idea’s you’ve never thought of “guaranteed!”

12. Build relationships with peers – We all love the A list bloggers, but building relationships with those that are at the same level as us is a great way to gain additional insights, followers, and contributors.

It helps you expand your reach, get your name into the blogosphere, and become known.

One of the best things about sharing idea’s with those in your niche is the motivation that you get.

It helps you reshape your thinking and build new principles to help you reach success.

If these tips have helped you than please contribute in the comment section with your own tips.

I’m sure it will not only help me improve, but help those that read your comments as well.

Your participation is just as important as this post! Thanks again, and have a great week

How to do backups for your WordPress Blog

How to do backups for your WordPress Blog

Having backups of your site is essential. Every webmaster should have few backups of his/hers website in case something goes wrong. In this tutorial we will cover the easiest and most useful ways to backup your WordPress website.

Do backups and more for your WordPress Blog.

  • Database Backup
  • WordPress XML Export
  • Optimize Database
  • Check\Repair Database
  • File Backup
  • Backups in zip, tar, tar.gz, tar.bz2 format
  • Store backup to Folder
  • Store backup to FTP Server
  • Store backup to Amazon S3
  • Store backup to Google Storage
  • Store backup to Microsoft Azure (Blob)
  • Store backup to RackSpaceCloud
  • Store backup to DropBox
  • Store backup to SugarSync
  • Send Log/Backup by Email
  • Multisite Support only as Network Admin

** WP 3.1 and PHP 5.2.5 Required!! **

** NO WARRANTY SUPPLIED! ** ** Test your Backups! **

 

Make money with Website Advertising

What could be better than having your own cool new website? Lot of ways to make money with a blog or a website. If you are wondering how you are going to monetize your site, then you’ve come to the right place. Well, how about if it helped to pay for itself? The way for your site to generate income is to allow companies to place small advertisements on your pages which try to entice your visitors to go to their website next.

You begin by signing up on an advertising agent’s website to become what’s called an affiliate. This is a very simple process and it is free so don’t let the sign up scare you off (but as always exercise caution with your personal information). There are many programs out there but Google’s AdSense is one of the best and most popular. Once you are a member you will be given simple instructions on how to insert the ads or links into your web pages. And that’s pretty much it.

So what kinds of things can you expect to see advertised on your website and making money? Well, Google’s famous AdSense program uses a very clever program to look through your website to determine what it’s about, and then displays only ads which are most likely to be of interest to your visitors. Basically all the hard work is done for you. Then, when a visitor to your website finds the ad interesting and clicks on it, your account is credited with a few cents. This is called pay-per-click advertising and has become extremely popular on the internet. Although a few cents per click may not seem like a lot, try to imagine how many times these ads might get clicked on during a month… 100…1000…10000…more? What ever the number is, it’s bound to help you cover the cost of your website.

You can sell advertising space in the form of banner adverts to businesses and people. It isn’t quite that simple though, you get paid differently by different advertisers.

CPM – Pay Per Impression Advertising

Your website receives revenue as and when you generate impressions for the sponsor. This rewards a website for every thousand impressions that it generates. You may get paid anywhere between $1~$7 per thousand impressions depending on your sponsor’s industry. Most well known CPM advertising network is BuySellAds.

PPC – Pay Per Click Advertising

You make pennies every time someone clicks on a banner or link. It generally works out to a higher amount per click when compared to CPM but it might depend on your niche.

You can run adverts on your site with of one the many ad networks. Google AdSense, The Blogger Network, Rev Content, Undertone and AdBlade are few of the options available to you.

For those of you who use WordPress as a platform to run their websites, you can try out BuySellAds. If you’d like a free plugin, check out Advanced Ads.

Selling advertisements via contextual ad networks is best when you have a site that covers a large spectrum of subjects. If your site targets specific niche or keywords, you’ll find that Affiliate Marketing is probably a better money making strategy for your site.

Also known as CPA or Cost Per Action, Affiliate Marketing is an extremely profitable way to generate revenue for your website. The section of Affiliate Marketing goes into a lot of detail, rightly employed it can make your site very profitable relative to running CPM or PPC advertisements. It’s also a lot tougher to utilize, so let’s talk about affiliate marketing.

Affiliate Marketing

As the name might suggest your website acts as an affiliate for someone else’s product or service.

How does affiliate marketing work ? 

You promote a certain product on your site, your visitor identifies the product as an effective solution to his or her necessities and purchases the product. You get a predetermined percentage or fixed commission for each purchase made by visitor or reader who passes by your site to discover the product or service and then makes a purchase on the affiliate sponsor’s website. This works because the company that sponsors the affiliate program finds a new customer, your visitor found a new product and you get a commission. All three parties involved end up with something they might not have had otherwise. You works as a middleman between buyer and seller and get paid for doing so.

Affiliate marketing campaigns produce new leads for the sponsor and generate commissions for your site effectively only when the niche of the campaign is close to your site’s niche. The further the distance between your niche and the campaign’s niche, the less effective the affiliate marketing efforts.

  • Tip #1: Keep the niche of any affiliate campaign as close to your site niche as possible. Ad networks ensure that the right adverts are displayed on your site with PPC & CPM, but with CPA you need to find the right affiliate to endorse.

Write honest content/reviews, never go over the top and recommend a product or service you have not used. It is okay to verify the features of a product and write a dispassionate review. To give a positive review for any product, use it first or read extensively about the product, reviews provided by domain authoritarians who have a history of being impartial and fair in their assessments (Your eventual aim should be to make your site in their image). And be informative, add value and try to help your readers find the best products. If you’ve used the product better still, be insightful.

  • Tip #2: Be honest & informative. And if you have used the product be insightful. Else you stand to lose your reader’s trust and you lose revenue.

Write about alternate choices. Never recommend a single product, always offer choice to the reader. Your site’s business is to inform your readers. Bestwpthemes writes about 20~50 themes in our collection roundups, it is to help provide choice and that’s for free themes. The choices provided should cover as wide a net as possible, when you expect your reader pay for a product.

  • Tip #3: Present reader with alternate choices. Doesn’t mean you can not recommend the best choices in your opinion but try to include as many alternates for your reader as possible.
  • Tip #4: A small piece of a bigger pie is better than, well you know how it goes!
  • Disclose affiliate income, always inform your reader that you receive a commission for products that you recommend. Let your reader know that, this is how your site generates income to pay for writers, website development and hosting. I am sure they’ll understand.
  • Tip #5: Disclose affiliate marketing on your site on pages where there are affiliate links.
  •  

    Do not push products on your readers. Stop cramming your content with multiple links, try to keep it to a minimum. It might turn off someone, allow for the possibility that your reader is skeptical about someone who profits from their suggestions. Never allow anyone to ever feel that you are merely trying to sell them things.

    Always attempt to connect with your audience by being informative, insightful and very importantly helpful.  After you’ve described the problem that you’re attempting to solve which should be one that your readers can relate to, only then should you proceed to promote a product as a possible solution. I think subtlety is underrated.

    Remember that affiliate marketing can help make a great deal of money for you, if you target the right niche. Not only should your site be relatable to that niche but your niche should have sufficient traffic from the specific niche. Affiliate marketing tends to be very targeted, it will not work if there is no money in that market to begin with.

    Before you decide to run an affiliate marketing campaign on your site, try reading the about the affiliate programs offered by the ten biggest players in your industry. Look at their customer numbers and their commission percentages. See if the numbers make sense and whether affiliate marketing is right for your site’s niche.

MyThemeShop offers 70% commission on any new customer you bring to them. We use their affiliate program on our website and highly recommend it.

In comparison, Elegant Themes offer a 50% commission and StudioPress offer a commission of 35%. If either of them had sales exceeding MyThemeShop by a great extent, they will make for better affiliate options but given that there isn’t too much of a difference, you will be better of using all three affiliate programs. This way you can present your readers with multiple choices.

Check out for how long the tracking is valid when you bring new traffic to these sites under affiliate programs. This also known as the tracking cookie period. Most reasonable affiliates have periods of 60 days or greater. After that any sale made as a result of traffic your site brought them, doesn’t earn you a commission. 

My examples may have been specific to the WordPress niche, because I am familiar with the WordPress. The commissions vary from sector to sector as the size of the deals vary. Look at all affiliate programs and identify the likelihood that they will generate a steady cash flow which is sustainable and builds over time. And test a few of them out before you settle on one or two of them.

NameCheap and Bluehost has a great affiliate program for many reasons, rather than boring you with “Why?”. I’d like to talk about Pat Flynn who made $424,800 which accounts for about 40% of his site’s revenue in 2014 via BlueHost’s affiliate program and about $670,000 from all affiliate programs. Now remember his website has multiple sources of income and apart from his BlueHost affiliate program all his other income sources are at best $50,000 and not more.  I’d recommend that you have a look at Pat’s site and his income statements, you’ll notice that despite the diversity in his income sources he makes about 65% of his income via affiliate programs. This should quite clearly illustrate the power of affiliate marketing.

A Few Things About Advertising – PPC, CPM and CPA

  • Tip #6: Banner adverts are not really your best option, their click through rates are rather low in comparison to in-content links. But if you aren’t using all the space on your website, then perhaps you could add banner advertisements to add to your revenue.
  • Tip #7: Cut out the middleman, many ad networks take out a chunk of your revenue. Remember direct deals are always better than going through an intermediary. It’s also a lot harder.
  • Tip #8: Never crowd your content out with too many advertisements banners or in text links.
  • Tip #9: Use a heat map plugin and try to figure out which parts of your website attract the most attention. Place your adverts appropriately.
  • Tip #10: While plain banner adverts (Not based on PPC, CPM & CPA) pay on a monthly or bi-monthly basis and offer some security of income, even if your traffic doubles or triples, you still get paid the same. PPC, CPM & CPA based advertising on the other pay based on how well your site does and how well it converts traffic into sales/impressions.

Sell Your Product/Service

Creating a website to generate revenue is primarily based on projecting yourself and the people who post content on your site as domain experts. Sometimes it is very easy to prove that you know your stuff, example would be a WordPress theme developer and writer. Aigars writes a great deal about themes and he gets a lot of interaction because he is a pretty awesome web developer.

Projecting yourself as a domain expert is crucial as it is what your site relies on to generate revenue. It is aided by creating products in that particular niche or in the alternative offering services in the same niche or even a related niche.

Of course this works both ways web developer turns writer and the otherway around, the same is applicable to any niche.

We publish a great deal of content about WordPress – Caching plugins, Themes, Hosting and so forth. You can read more about it here. It helps boost credibility and therefore helps with product sales.

  • Tip #11: Generating good and most importantly useful content will help project authority and domain expertise and bring more sales.

This is not limited to digital products like themes, it can be extended to almost any industry for which there is sufficient interest on the internet. Companies of any niche or sector can sell their own products via the internet.

  • Tip #12: Selling stuff services/products and generating good content on the same industry/niche/sector brings in more visitors and as a result more prospective customers to your site.

You may have noticed by now selling products and generating useful content go hand in hand. One aids the other and vice versa.

Whilst selling your own products and services creating an affiliate program will help sell your product better. You will obtain a greater reach by sharing a percentage of your product’s price for sale that may have gone unrealized otherwise.

Some people may be reluctant to share their profits, but what they fail to realize is that the profits you share would not have been realized at all had there not been an incentive for your affiliate to share and recommend your products.

DOMAIN NAME SEARCH and REGISTRATION – Website

DOMAIN NAME SEARCH and REGISTRATION

Once you find someone to host your website (ie. store your website files on their server), you need to come up with a domain name. This is that familiar name which always follows the www in a website address. The best domain names are short, descriptive, and to the point so that they are easy for your visitors to remember.Some good domain name examples are:

yahoo.com,
google.com,
ucla.edu and
cntower.ca.
The ending after the dot simply helps to describe the type of site you have (commercial, educational, government, organization, etc) or the country of origin (Canada). When picking your new domain name try to avoid using odd short forms, uncommon acronyms, and words which are often misspelled.
 
Once you have settled on a domain name which will become your website’s address, then it is time to check if that name is still available or if someone else is already using it. Remember that your website address must be unique. No two websites can have the same domain name or address. So your next step is the domain name search. There are many companies on the internet which can do this for you (even for free) and some are listed at the bottom of this page. If your chosen domain name is available then you are in
luck and can proceed with domain name registration. Often these companies will search, register, and even host your website.

 

Below are advertisements and links to websites which
specialize in domain name searching and registration.
Namecheap.com - Cheap domain name registration, renewal and transfers - Free SSL Certificates - Web Hosting
Namecheap.com - Cheap domain name registration, renewal and transfers - Free SSL Certificates - Web Hosting

 

Start your own Website

Is so easy and simple

Once upon a time creating a website is huge task because you should know lot of thinks like webmaster skill, web designing and HTML code etc… Nowadays its so simple like using a facebook!! The origin of the internet can be traced back to educational institutions like MIT, UCLA or UC, so it should come as no surprise just how many educational websites are currently in existence. What’s even more impressive is that unlike the enormous budgets of commercial institutions, most educational websites exist on minimal budgets and are created and maintained with time donated by teachers and students.

The number of educational websites is increasing very quickly, so if you have been thinking about starting your school, classroom, or personal website then you are not alone. Here is a short and simple guide to the concepts you should know before making a website. We hope you find the following useful.

Hosting

You really have two options when it comes to hosting provider types recommended for WordPress newbies.

  • Shared Hosting
  • Managed WordPress Hosting

I do not recommend anything other than a shared hosting plan for first time webmasters. All other forms of hosting that you may have heard of like Virtual Private Hosting (requires reasonable technical know how), managed WordPress hosting (too costly) might not be the right choice for your first website. As your knowledge and business grows you might consider VPS or fully managed WordPress hosting but let’s leave that for another post.

Shared hosting is the way to go and later we can talk about upgrading your host. We’ve recommended two shared hosting services and have also added elaborate installation processes for WordPress with both of them. Both hosting providers offers domain registration and website hosting and that’s exactly what we need to create an awesome website.

Namecheap Hosting

To make WordPress installation process easier we have created a short video that will guide you through installation process.

Click here to visit Namecheap and proceed with your first website setup.

If you had some problems understanding setup process outlined in video you can follow steps below.

 

Namecheap.com - Cheap domain name registration, renewal and transfers - Free SSL Certificates - Web Hosting

Namecheap.com - Cheap domain name registration, renewal and transfers - Free SSL Certificates - Web Hosting

Free PositiveSSL and WhoisGuard with Every Domain Purchase

How to Create a WEBSITE

Just like every document or photo you have in your computer is stored as an electronic file on your disk drive, so will be the pages of your website. The difference is that your website will not be on your computer, but on a large and powerful computer permanently connected to the internet and made specifically for that purpose. This type of a computer is called a ‘server’. So one of the first things you
must decide is: who’s server will be ‘hosting’ your website.

Here you have two main choices which differ in cost and flexibility. You probably noticed that some website names are very simple such as “www.myschool.com” and some might have a longer address such as “www.yahoo.com/school/newyork/k-12/myschool.com”. The difference is that in the first example the school owns their own ‘domain’, where as in the second case the school uses some of the server space available in the “yahoo” domain (that’s why the address starts with “www.yahoo.com”) . Think of it like owning your own city block (your own domain) or renting an apartment in a tall building (part of someone else’s domain).

Obviously being part of someone else’s domain has some restriction such as amount of space available for your website, number of email addresses available, number of visitors you can have, and of course the choice of your website address. The main advantage however used to be the low cost. Many internet service providers (the people that connect you to the internet and give you an email address) will often let you use some of their own server space to host a small website for free. On the other hand, having your own domain means that you have significantly more freedom and resources available to your organization. The cost of having your own domain used to be relatively high, but with the continuing growth of the internet and the progress of the associated technology, the cost of owning your own domain has dropped significantly and is now less than the cost of owning your own cell phone. Furthermore, there are now some very easy ways to have the website pay for itself (more on that in part 4).
 When looking for a website (or domain) hosting company, you need to have an idea of how much space you will require on their server. Typical websites containing text and some pictures require a moderate amount of space, perhaps 50MB (50 mega bytes). So a school website with 20 independent classroom sites would require only about 1000MB=1GB (1 giga byte). What requires a lot more server space are websites which contain video clips or audio files. Our advice is to start small and if your site(s) begin running out of server space then your hosting company will probably notify you, and you can simply increase your server allowance for a few extra dollars per month. 

Below are some ads from different web hosting services available on the internet. Some will not only host your site but also offer to create your website for free, or at least give you the software which will allow you to do it yourself. If you pick the right hosting service they will walk you through the rest of the points we are about to describe.
Namecheap.com - Cheap domain name registration, renewal and transfers - Free SSL Certificates - Web Hosting

Namecheap.com - Cheap domain name registration, renewal and transfers - Free SSL Certificates - Web Hosting

 

How to Setup Google Adsense

How to Setup Google Adsense

Before the conceptualization of residual income, people would create blogs only to express their thoughts, ideas, opinions, and everything else under the sun and to share those with friends, colleagues, and random readers from around the world who log on to the internet.

Empty pockets never held anyone back. Only empty heads and empty hearts can do that.- Norman Vincent Peale

Blogs were not thought of as a marketing tool to promote a business’s products and services until marketers  realized that blogs that receive a lot of traffic can actually convert the views into actual sales.  Aside from this, by having an effective advertising network like Google Adsense incorporated into one’s blog, you can already be able to earn money online by doing what you love: blogging.  Google Adsense is one of the most popular ways that people adopt when making money from blogging and believe it or not, it is actually quite easy to have Google ads displayed in one’s blog.  And if your blog is a popular one that brings in a lot of traffic, you can earn a lot of money from it over time.But that’s the problem there; most people who want to earn money by putting Google ads on their blog don’t really know how to do so.  They create accounts, set up their blog, but stop there because that’s the aspect of earning money through blogging that they’re not familiar with.  Let’s have a look at how you can set up Google Adsense on your blog:

  • The first step to setting up Google Adsense on your blog is to create the blog first.  There are many possible blog services to choose from like WordPress or Blogger, the latter being the easiest blog to set up ads on.  After creating and arranging the lay-out of your blog, you should post a couple of entries because the Google Adsense team would first review your site to determine what related ads to place on your blog.
  • The second step is to apply for a Google Adsense account.  You won’t be able to earn without it, so make sure to open one by creating a Google account and signing into Adsense using your account details.  After this, Google will then send you an e-mail asking you to verify your e-mail address.  Make sure to click on the link so that your application will be sent and a representative will visit your site or blog for review.  Since we’re talking about Google Adsense on a blog, continue posting regularly because they’ll be sending you a notice about their overview in a matter of days.
  • If the Google Adsense team sends you an e-mail of approval, you can then log into your account to get the HTML code, which is what you will paste into your blog or website.  You can find this in the Adsense Setup tab, which is where you will find context-sensitive ads under the Adsense for Content link.
  • The next step is pasting the code into your blog’s HTML editor.  Always make sure that you are inserting the code as HTML and that you are pasting it into your blog’s template so that you won’t have to keep putting it in every post you make manually.

By following these steps and posting great content for traffic, you’ll be surprised one day to find money in your account and a letter from Google with your PIN code for you to use to access your funds.

For more step by step information, visit Google Adsense.

Good luck!

The Most Honest Adsense – Review

The Most Honest Adsense

Nowadays a lot of Internet users have heard about making money on the Internet with pay per click advertising. The most popular PPC broker is Google Adsense. With this system you can place ad blocks on your website and get paid for every click your visitors generate.

 

Lets have a closer look at what Google Adsense has to offer to it’s publishers:

 

  • Google Adsense for context – ad bots automatically crawl your pages and
    display relevant advertisers, so this means that users, who want more
    information, would be glad to visit sponsored ads, and you will earn cash. You
    have the option to pick only text, graphic or both types of advertisements. Now
    Adsense targets ads using Double Dart cookie, which ensures higher CTR and the
    quality of advertisements. – Not more then 3 ad units per page!
  • Adsense for search – new and improved search system gives your the
    possibility to integrate Google search engine into your website and earn money
    for clicks generated from the search result pages.
  • Google Ads for cell phone devices – if your website can be accessed by cell
    phone and PDA users, you can earn cash by placing this type of ads too.
  • Ads for feeds – place ads on your RSS feeds. Here you can place way more ad
    units per page (the most I’ve seen was 7 or 8, can’t really remember).
  • Google Adsense for domains – if you have some spare domains, you can park
    them at adsense and earn cash for every generated click.
  • Every ad unit can be modified to fit your website layout, you can pick the background color, text and link colors. Also I have to tell about the link units, which tend to be more attractive to users. Link units can display more ads on a separate
page. A lot of people, who start up with Adsense wonder how much they can make per click or per 1000 visitors. According to Google website, you can earn up to 5$ per click, but your earning depends only on your user activity (on your CTR – click through-rate). Also I know that new web-masters, who have just signed up with Google adsense want to earn a lot and right away, so they ask friends to click ads. This is strongly forbidden by adsense and I recommend you not to click youradvertisement,  google is way more smarter thanyou think.