Choose A Niche

This is where you start getting people to your site. There are many options and different people will tell you different tactics. Here’s my top six must-do list:

1. Install the RSS Feed Plug-in for Wordpress and submit your feed to Feedburner

   Feed subscribers are very important to the success of your blog. By installing the feed plugin, all of your feeds will be routed through Feedburner so you can get a somewhat accurate count of your subscribers. I saw somewhat accurate because feed reader counts can be skewed by many factors, including search engine bots.

   Once you are on the Feedburner site, be sure to read up on allowing users to subscribe to your feed via email. There are a ton of ways to optimize and advertise your blog RSS, so be sure to spend some time deciding which methods you would like to try.

2. Register at Technorati, My Blog Log and at least three other blog directory sites

   When you register for these sites, you become part of a community. It really is not about being listed in the directory, but about finding other bloggers in your niche and networking with them. Although you don’t want to spend too much time on these sites, I recommend dedicating a couple of hours a week in your schedule to making friends with other bloggers in your niche via blog directory sites.

3. Add your index page and at least two posts to Stumble Upon

   If you aren’t comfortable doing this under your own Stumble Upon login, create a new one or ask one of your new networking buddies to submit your articles for you. Just be sure this gets done. Stumble Upon can bring a huge influx of traffic to your blog. Because Stumble Upon users can narrow down the topics they surf, some of this traffic is highly targeted and that makes it high quality. Yes, some of these hits are simply empty numbers, but if you can get a few articles regularly Stumbled, you can count on it as a fairly steady source for targeted traffic.

4. Write an article with your new blog linked in the resource box and submit it to EzineArticles.com

   I have an article on Speed Reading that gets front-page Google results because it resides on E-Zine Articles. There area few keys to this. You need to submit content that has not been and will not be published anywhere else. It needs to be well-written, 100% original and exclusively submitted to E-Zine Articles.

   There are other article sites that may work just as well, but I haven’t tried them out for quick results, so I can’t vouch for them. Within a couple of weeks to publishing my articles to E-Zine Articles, my work was syndicated several times and ranked. Before you do this, spend some time on your resource box. Think of it as a mini advertisement for your blog. You only have a few sentences, so make them count.

5. Register for Google Webmaster Tools (it’s free)

   Once you are logged in, add your blog to your dashboard. Be sure to include the XML sitemap created by the Wordpress plugin. This is a much faster way to get your new site indexed than simply submitting it to Google. Though this does not guarantee that your site will be crawled, this method has never failed to get my new sites indexed within the first couple of days - no more than a week.

6. Start commenting on other blogs

   This is the very best way to get 100% targeted traffic. Find some blogs in your niche and get to know them. Read the archives and start commenting on the newer articles. Many bloggers don’t pay much attention to comments on posts older than a month, so don’t waste your time commenting on those. Stick to the new stuff and you’ll soon be noticed.

   Here’s the thing: be useful. If you jump around leaving comments like “Great post!” you are doing nothing but filling space. The way to get noticed (and get clicked) is to contribute something worthwhile to the conversation. Share your opinion, answer a question or find some other way to be sure your comment adds actual value. Spam commenting will never bring positive results.

As I said, there are a million ways to advertise for free, but those six will get you headed in the right direction. You will notice that most of them focus on community. The blogosphere can be a tight community and, at times, hard to break into. If you and your site contribute original content and insights then all it takes is persistence to get noticed.

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The money is in the list. Repeat this over and over in your head until you believe it. This is the first rule of internet marketing. Though it does not directly relate to creating or writing for a blog, if you aren’t leveraging your blog to build a list, you are wasting traffic.

The best way to look at your list is to view each subscriber as $1 a month. The trick is that while you view them as $1, you also need to view them as an individual person. Your list needs to be nurtured or your subscribers won’t stick around very long. If you only contact them when you want them to buy something, you might be seeing dollar signs instead of names. But more about that in a few minutes.

It may seem that if you are building a blog you don’t need to build a list. I mean, you are already trying to build RSS subscribers, so what’s the difference? The difference is huge, really. If you want to seriously make money online, you need a list of hungry, trusting people to contact when great offers come your way.

If you are just blogging because you enjoy it, then you don’t really need to concern yourself with list building. However, if you want to make money online, your blog is the perfect hub for this activity.

Building a list can be a time-consuming and tricky process. You need to start with an incentive. Though you might pick up a few subscribers here and there without one, the best way to hook people is to give them something for free. Here is the trick part. If you give them something super-valuable to get them to join your list, you might just hook freebie seekers. On the other hand, you do not want to hand out junk or you’ll lose them fast.

What I have found to be the best list bait is a high quality report. It needs to impart knowledge that is original, but nothing too in depth. Your subscribers need to be left wanting more and thinking that you are the only one who can give it to them.

Once you have chosen your report, you will set up a sign-up form on your blog. I recommend you place it on the sidebar so that it is viewable from each page on your blog. For an example, you can look at the Newsletter Sign-up on Pajama Professional. I do not push the list on that site very hard, but I do get regular sign-ups simply because of the form placement.

As users sign up, you need to make sure you immediately start building trust and establishing your expertise. This is why you must have a strong series of autoresponder messages in place. A quality autoresponder service is inexpensive yet invaluable to you. Most people who subscribe to your list will be subscribed to numerous other lists at the same time. Every person on your list is just one click away from being … well … not on your list. As I said before: nurture.

I use Aweber and I highly recommend their service. For less than $20 a month I have basically unlimited resources. Once you are signed up, create a list and load it up with messages. Then grab the code to place a subscription form on your site. Once that is completed all you have to do is sit back and wait for the subscribers to roll in.

Back to nurturing. Even if the subscribers are rolling in, they will be rolling right back out if all you are doing is pitching to them. Your messages need to provide quality information that they cannot get elsewhere. Freebies are always good too. However, you need to be careful with how often and what types of free products you offer because you do not want a list full of freebie hounds.

Establishing a large list of targeted, hungry prospects is the primary goal of most internet marketers. In order to maintain a list like that, you need to appreciate your prospects. Treat them well and you will build trust and acceptance. They will know they can count on you for quality information and products.

Regardless of your niche, you need to remember that your list is made up of people. When you are writing content and choosing products (freebies or sales items), put yourself in their shoes. Make sure that whatever you are offering is something you yourself would find valuable. If it is the same freebie e-book that everyone is giving away this month, buy the giveaway rights to something new.

It might cost a bit to begin with, but it will be worth it when you have a happy list. They will know that if you give such high quality items away for free, then whatever you are selling must be truly fantastic. And make sure that it is. You will only ever get away with selling crap once. Sure, you might make a few hundred dollars, but your reputation is shot and your list subscribers have all jumped ship.

When building and maintaining any type of marketing list, you need to offer quality, by ethical and never try to sell something in which you do not honestly believe. If you stick to those three rules of thumb, you should be able to build a list full of members worth their weight in gold.

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Making money online is the dream of many, but the reality of few. There are nearly as many ways to make dollars as there are dollars to be made. From affiliate marketing to private advertising, you have a huge array of choices when it comes to monetizing your blog.

Just remember that whatever method(s) you choose must be tested and tweaked. Rarely will a monetization tactic work straight out of the box. Each blog has a different set of readers with a different set of triggers, get to know your readers and you will be able to offer them products they need. If you can do this, you can make money online.

When it comes to blog monetization methods, your options are often limited by certain statistics (pagerank, RSS subscribers, etc.). These statistics vary with different methods and they change as fast as technology. Here is a brief overview of some of the most popular ways to make money online.

Google Adsense

The bread and butter of many a pro-blogger, Google Adsense has severely lost its charm in the last six months. Many bloggers make the majority of their online income from this smart advertising script. However, it is quickly becoming less and less viable to do so. The Adsense terms of service are quite strict and, at the same time, vague. By leaving too much room for interpretation, Google makes it difficult for even the whitest-hatted blogger to be sure they won’t be penalized.

Adsense is easy to set up and it is fun to play with different options to achieve the best results. If you are willing to play closely by the rules, you can still make a good income with the program. My advice is to enjoy it, but do not quit your day job because of a good month (or five) with Adsense. In this case, it is especially important to diversify your income streams.

Contextual Advertising
Selling text links that pass Google rank is a quick way - these days - to ensure that you won’t have any rank to pass for very long. You have two choices here: (1)Give up on pagerank and sell all the texts links you want or (2) sell the links, but make sure you put “nofollow” code on them so that you are not selling pagerank. At this point, pagerank still matters and I predict it will for quite some time. For this reason, I would recommend protecting your rank and making sure you follow the rules when it comes to text links. Don’t think Google will give you a pass because you are just starting out. They will find you.

That said, there are some lucrative (if you are in the right niche) text linking options out there. For those of you not familiar with the term, a contextual linking program chooses words within your posts that are related to their advertisers’ sites and creates links. The links are usually double-underlined and a color other than standard blue (Kontera links are green).

Affiliate Marketing

This is arguably the very best way to make the very most money online. There are many ways to go about selling affiliate products. You can write a review on your blog, become active in forums and place affiliate information in your signature or simply place referral ads on your website.

If you are interested in affiliate marketing, I recommend
you learn from The Super Affiliate, Zac Johnson. This guy is the real deal, he has made serious money as an affiliate and he shares his tactics. His writing style is clear and very accessible, even for the newest of newbies.

Selling Ad Space Independently

Once your blog has some good stats going, you can set up some ad spots and sell advertising independently. For an example of an ad page, you can visit Pajama Professional’s Advertising Page. You will want to include the following statistical information for prospective advertisers:

• Alexa ranking
• Technorati authority and ranking
• Google Pagerank
• RSS Subscriber count
• Traffic (daily, monthly, visits, page views)
• Other interesting statistics

The advertising information page should also include details about the ad spots you have available and the rates. You may want to offer specials to new advertisers or advertisers who buy ad blocks over a certain period of time. Many blogs only offer 30 day periods, but I read an article recently challenging this idea (Selling Ads for One Month on your Blog is Stupid) and decided that it was absolutely correct. Your ad terms are entirely up to you, testing is really the only way to know what will work best.

Paid Posting

Another monetization option is to write paid posts for sites like PayPerPost and Smorty. Google is not a fan of paid posts, so there is a bit of a catch 22 here. You see, in order to get high-paying post opportunities you need a decent pagerank. However, if Google sees that you are posting paid reviews, they will smack your pagerank down. So what do you do? Pay-Per-Post is establishing their own system called RealRank in response to Google’s anti-paid linking policy.

If you are just starting your blog, I would recommend laying off on using paid posting for a bit. Blogs younger than three months rarely have very high-paying opportunities anyway, so I suggest biding your time until all the pagerank slapping settles down. Once you have been live for 90 days or so then you might see where the dust has settled.

Making money with your blog is not the overnight magic pill many people will have you believe. Most of the people who try to convince you that it is are just trying to sell you a product or service that promises overnight riches. Do not believe it.

In order to make money from your blog, you need traffic. It takes time to build traffic so you must work hard to create quality content and continue patiently marketing your site. Do not be discouraged if you don’t make even a penny for several months. Establishing your authority and expertise takes time, but it will happen.

This brings to a close my seven step method for choosing a niche. Please use the comments to ask any questions you may have regarding anything I have covered so far on this blog.

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