Money From Blogging

Google Adsense versus Direct Advertisment

Mike Skel — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 18:21:53 +0000

Recently, I made a mistake which I realised after a month, but nothing could be done to rectify the mistake, at least for another year! I thought I would share my mistake here. I would call, it was my stupidity.

Recently, I sold a banner ad to a company in a blog where I was using a Google AdSense! I always liked drect advertisement as I felt, these looks better on a website and gives a feeling of important website for visitors! How wrong I was!

I removed Google AdSense and put the ad banner. After one week, while checking my Google AdSense earning, I realised, my earning has gone down drastically and the banner ad was not compensating me enough! The losses for a year from Google AdSense would be far higher than the total earning by the banner ad!

So, my lesson is, never jump into selling direct advertisement which earns you less than Google AdSense.

So, this was my stupidity. I am never going to repeat the mistake again and also, will never take offer which is pays less than my current earning from Google AdSense from the same space and area.

Golden keyword targeting rule

Mike Skel — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 05:51:29 +0000

How many keywords in a page ?

It is not that difficult to use different and many keywords in the same article or page of a blog. But one should never try to target more than two keywords in one page. If one targets more than two keywords, it will confuse Google and it may even attract penalty from mighty Google. So, the golden rule for tageting number of keywords in a page is two, at maximum.

Landing pages

Landing pages are the pages where a visitor lands from search engines. Many a times, it is a page, post in a blog where a Google searcher land directly. One would find, it is normally “long trail” keywords searching which a searcher land in a blog page or blog post, not home page.
So landing pages are important, not only for getting organic traffic, but also to increase loyal readers. So, it is wise to keep watching landing pages in a blog and optimise it wisely to retain loyal readers.

Page wise SEO optimisation

Each page should be treated as a landing page and each page or blog post should have its own page description, meta tags, well defined title, headers etc. Single page optimisation is key in increasing number of keywords ranked in any search engine results as well as increase authority.

Long tail keywords first

One will realise very soon that, search engine starts sending visitors for long tail keywords matching the page. So, when one is not sure about widely searched keywords or phrase ( I can say safely that, no tool can provide you accurate number of search count), then one should always start keyword targeting with long tail ones.

What is your keyword targeting strategy ?

Witty One liner

Mike Skel — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 12:14:42 +0000

One of the easiest and smart way of getting link back well as unique blog visitor is to leave comments on other blogs. Most probably, that is one of the reason why everybody uses anti-spam plugin as well as comment moderation.

But, what kind of comments get you maximum visitors to you blog ?

Witty one liner.

Why so ?
After a reader reads the article, he may do the following, either read the comments or write a new comment, submit to his social media. How does a person read comments ? Surely not with as much as concentration as he did for the article. But he would surely try to read first one line of the comment quickly. And there if he gets a smart one liner, one would be interested to know about the comment writer and he would surely click back the link.

There may be people who would read first few entries of comments, but many would like to scroll and have a look at all the known commentator. So, for an unknown commentator, witty one liners may become an identity and become known quickly.

Making money from blogging

Mike Skel — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 12:35:48 +0000

Bloggers build up articles, comments in their blog over a period of time. Though many people love to read posts on a website, there are also a people who want to learn in a traditional way, in a finite time. So, once a blogger become famous as well as authority on his chosen niche, he may start planning to earn conducting online courses, webinars for others with some registration fees.

This is one of the most profitable “making money online” scheme which blogger may take up. This can become a steady source of income for a blogger.

Many bloggers are experts in some chosen field. They can conduct courses, tutorials n their filed of expertise. There would be many readers who would be benefited by such course and would not mind signing up and pay a fees.

Online course may help the blogger with direct interaction, questions by participants. During direct interaction, people ask interesting question which may lead to interesting articles, discussions.

There are many topics of which one may conduct an online paid tutorial or course. Many people conduct online paid course for blogging too. Likewise, blogger may conduct some courses on article writing, computer repair, mobile repair, application development, personality development etc.

Finally, blogging may offer different and innovative options for making money and one should always look for opportunities.

Benefits of puting custom google internal search

Mike Skel — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 09:25:29 +0000

In every blog, one would find a search option to search contents of the blog. This is one of the “must have” features in an website which helps website usability as well as great tool to find related information for a visitor. Though, search may not be much useful with blogs with few posts, but imaging of a blog which has thousands of posts! Search inside the site does help find related posts or contents!

Here are few benefits of having search feature in a blog:

1. It makes money

One of the most important reason for putting custom google search n your blog! You may earn moneywhile people search your site! Google displays related advertisements as per search keywords! Normally, these advertisements link to relevant website which increases chances of click by the web visitors.

2. One may get idea about new keywords

If one keeps checking log of search keywords used by visitors, he would get ideas which keywords are more searched than others. It may give good hint, what kind of keywords to target and how to monetise them!

3. Increases site usability

It increases usability of the blog as people can search quickly for related contents or keyword inside the website. Many contents may be buried inside archive pages which takes time for manual browsing! But with search option, people can find content quickly.

4. Marketing Analytic

Search keywords or phrases may give very good analysis of website visitors patterns. It will help online marketing analysis and position contents of the blog for getting more visitor as well as increase online earning.

So, have you put Google Custom Search page yet ?

Unproductive Online Time blogger should avoid

Mike Skel — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 16:40:35 +0000

Internet has many resources, appealing websites, games sites, and finally many interesting social networks. In a single sentence, internet can be a great place to “kill” your time! And one may kill himself by killing his “lifetime”, but internet may not get exhausted of contents, resources.

But then, a blogger has finite time, specific tasks to complete within a time frame. A blogger has to write “pillar” posts at least once a week, research what competitor or related bloggers doing. And finally, they have actual office to attend daily, not to mention time for family and friends ( even though, all may be online in a social network site like facebook).

So, it is a good idea to list how not to “waste” precious online time in unproductive activities. I have listed few which I try to avoid doing while online:-

1. Check AdSense Earning hourly

I avoid checking adSense earning hourly and has decided to check only once in two days. I believe that I must keep watching AdSense earning regularly so as to plan my SEO related activities. But, I have started avoiding checking AdSense earning frequently as I have realised that checking it hourly does not increase the earning!

2. Do not check Alexa Ranking

I have decided that, I will not check Alexa ranking. Instead of Alexa Ranking, I would check Google Analytics for new keywords using which some visitors have landed on my blog! Checking Alexa Ranking again and again is surely waste of online time!

3. No more hitting on MORE button in Twitter

Ok, I follow many people in Twitter and my home page is always flooded with updates! But, I will not hit the button MORE to check if I have missed any important updates from important people! I am sure, I will those important “tweets” “retweeted” to be able to read them when I am online! If they are not retweeted enough, well I will pass them as not so important!

4. Will not read all status messages in Facebook

I will not read all status messages in facebook home page! Friends may put out impressive and interesting messages, but I will not be tempted to “like” them or comment them! I would rather search for articles in facebook related to my keywords. I would rather search FAN pages then reading status messages.

5. Never check SPAM folder

I will not check my Gmail Spam folder. I will trust Google to be accurate in detecting SPAMs. Will only check when I am subscribing to some news letter, blog feed and at that time only. Else I will never check SPAM folder.

With these 5 resolutions, I have saved lot of time from wasting in un-productive online time! How do you avoid un-productive online time ?

Tips to get ideas for your next blog post

Mike Skel — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 17:27:16 +0000

Regularly updated blogs attract regular visitors, and this is well known now a days as it has been repeated in almost all MMO(Make Money Online) blogs as well as every online marketing blogs in different languages. Most probably, one would say, I also have done just that now.

While benefits of updating blog with new and quality contents helps increase both visitors and blog earning, finding new ideas for next blog post is not easy, at least for me. First point is, it may not help updating blog with any kind of post, just for the heck of it! It may work other way around, even regular readers would stop visiting the site! I have been using few tricks for getting ideas for my future blog posts:-

1. Writing down every idea that comes to mind anytime during my waking hours

I have started noting down every idea that comes to my mind whole day and night. I use my mobile ( well, I find it in my pockets everywhere I go including bathroom.) to note down the thought or idea. More specifically, I type the idea in “NEW TEXT MESSAGE” and save in the draft.
I read them back when I have time to write a new post for my blog. This has helped me never lose an idea as ideas may come and go any time during the day.

2. Search Google, Yahoo, Bing with keywords those interest me

I regularly search Google for keywords about which I decide to write in my next post. I normally search the same term in more than one search engine. I also search in Bing, Yahoo, in Digg, Forums etc. They give out different sites which gives many ideas.
I never copy contents from those search results, but I surely read those articles. And then try to think what they have missed out. I note down those and plan to write my next post.

3. Read comments on my blogs as well as others

I read comments on my old posts. Some times, they supply me with interesting ideas for my next blog post.
I also read old posts in others blog, normally in blogs similar to mine and read their comments. Comments surely provide many ideas which are easier to convert to article.

I have been using these tricks for last few months and I have not faced a situation where I have run out of ideas for my next post. It takes some time while searching, but it helps in keeping blog updated.

Planning a new blog to make money online

Mike Skel — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 16:31:22 +0000

Almost all blogger start making money at one point of time or the other, or at least they try to make money from their blogs. And then, there also some blogger who start blogs just to try making money from blogs and then give up quickly. But, nothing wrong in starting a new blog with sole purpose of making money, in fact, I would agree that, this is also an interesting and important reason why one should start blogging.

But, starting a new blog does not mean only buying a domain, installing WordPress and then start posting articles! One must be very clear about the “niche blog” that one is going to blog! In order to be very clear, one must do a “research” on his “niche blog topic”.

So, researching should be the first important task in order to start a new blog for making money with it. Now the question is, how to do research step by step :-

1. By researching, one should mainly aim to find already existing blog or website with the same topics. Easiest way is to think about keywords, phrases related to the “niche topic”. One should write down the list of keywords, phrases in all possible ways, interchanging words if a phrase, changing spelling, even making spelling mistakes!

2. The next step is to search those keywords, phrase in Google and visit top 15 results, note down the websites, compare how they are faring for which keywords/phrases in the list #1.

3. Read the contents of the blog or website which are ranking top 10 in majority of the keywords/phrases in the list as in #1 above. This content would give you right direction, help you plan your own content, position your niche blog!

Many of the times, people start blogging without doing much research and that is one of the reasons why one runs out of ideas, feel frustrated for not ranking well for targeted keywords. Researching one’s competition is one of simplest and widely used tricks to beat and stay ahead of competition.

Importance of Advertise Page in a blog

Mike Skel — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 18:14:39 +0000

While visiting others blog, many would find a page “Advertise” or “Sponsor this blog” where blogger writes about “achievements”, “importance”, “authority” of the blog with various blog statistics like visitors per day, page views alexa ranking etc.

In order to make money from blogging, advertising is the best way to earn regularly and much more than any of those PPC( Pay Per Click) advertising like Google AdSense, AdBrite etc. It may not be easy to advertising during initial period of blogging or if the blog traffic is not impressive! But, for earning with direct advertising on a blog, creating a “Advertise” is the first step.

Existence of Advertse page make visitors to the website aware that the blog is open to having advertisements about products, services related to its topic. So, if some one wants to make money from blog, he must put one “Advertise” page in his blog.

How Advertising page should be organised

1. Blog statistics

One should display blog statistics at the beginning of the advertisement page as this is exactly what an advertiser looks quickly! Only if the blog statistics suits or impressive enough, one may look for other contents in the advertise page. Alexa ranking, page views per month, per day, search engine ranking, number of posts, number of email subscribers etc helps.

2. A sales pitch how advertising on the blog may help a product

Next section should be a few “killer points” why one should advertise on the blog and get return on investment. This section is very important as many advertisers may not remian indecisive, and this section can help them take decision, in favour of advertising.

3. Type of advertisements size, page

One should write details about advertising sizes, area of the website and pages where the advertisements would be displayed.

4. Rates and payment details

Rates for advertising as per size, duration, page, location should be clearly written.

5. Contact

Finally, a contact form for quick mail for any doubt or order confirmation.

So, have you put an advertising page on your blog ?

Why blogs can earn from AdSense

Mike Skel — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 18:36:20 +0000

Blogs, as people say, started out as personal opinion, personal logging of events on internet. But very soon, it became a powerful type of website for publishing and sharing ideas, tips and tricks. And soon, blogs became a free source of information!

So, people started thinking blogs about resource sites for learning anything on internet. This is the reason why blogger can earn from AdSense! People search and visit blogs for learning, knowing gathering some information and one type of the information is, learn related websites, further readings!

Google AdSense provides excellent opportunity here as it displays relevant advertisement related to the topics, article written on the blogs. It displays related websites as per contents of the current page which people may like to visit by clicking on those links. And that is how a blog makes money.

Actually, Google charges the web masters for promoting their websites and part of that advertising revenue is paid to the blogger where Google displays advertisements linking their websites. Google pays per click on the links.

Google charges different amount for different websites. It depends on the keywords depending on which different advertisements are displayed. Some keywords are widely searched on internet and they cost per click is higher than those keywords which are searched less, that is the general rule.

So, in order to earn more from Google AdSense, one should target high paying, competitive keywords. It may take time to rank high on search engines for competitive keywords, but if one writes very resourceful article, it can rank high on any search engine and which in turn can bring more visitors, and increase chances of more clicks.

So, blogs can make money by using Google AdSense and targeting high paying keywords in blog articles is the key to earn more and more from Google AdSense.