5 Ways to Turbo Charge Your Blog Monetization

By now you probably know that simply plastering ads all over your pages and prominent donation links don’t really work. There really are no get-rich-quick schemes in blogging; turning your blog into a reliable income generator requires hard work, experimentation, and patience. Those are three aspects common among the five methods I share in this post.

Optimum Ad Placement

Like it or not, your average visitor has learned to ignore parts of your website that seem like ads—even elements that really aren’t ads! The kneejerk reaction to this reality is an in-your-face approach towards ad layout, sacrificing readability for the sake of ensuring your ads are front and center.

If you’re committed to building a long-term quality audience however, you’ll need to find a good balance between content and ad visibility. [Read more]

5 Basic and Yet Essential Tips to Get You Started with Blogging

So you were inspired by the self-made successful bloggers that you read daily and you want to start a blogging career? The problem is you don’t know where to start.

Here are 5 simple, basic, bare and yet essential tips that will help you get started with your blogging adventure. [Read more]

5 Ways to Stand Out in Your Niche

We all know how saturated certain blog niches are, especially when you’re talking about technology, entertainment, and sports. Having a lot of competitors though doesn’t mean you can take the following steps to stand out and differentiate yourself from the rest of the field.

Focus on Geography

Everyone knows about Gizmodo and Engadget, but how many people realize that both blogs are mainly for US readers? I’ve found some degree of success with Technograph, a tech blog I created that’s all about Technology in the Philippines, where I’m currently based.

The US is still king when it comes to come to potential traffic and thus potential income. But concentrating on your region and provide updates more suited to your home audience is a great way to be unique.

First!

Some blogs become mainstream because they consistently broke news first, scooping your so-called mainstream media and online competitors. The irony is that as they become more mainstream, these blogs show less and less initiative, becoming part of the establishment that independent operators can trump.

This is a method that’s as old as news itself: be the first to break it, and you automatically stand out from the rest in your niche.

Thoughtful Reporting

Granted, it’s very hard to be first always, but it’s also possible to survey the entire situation once everyone has published their fast—and sometimes inaccurate or shallow—coverage.

In other words, by concentrating on providing quality content, thoughtfully reporting on an issue or an event and covering all perspectives, it’s possible to become an authoritative source. Being an authority in your niche is a powerful differentiator, as it establishes your blog as the site to visit for a topic.

Socialization

A lot of blog authors are content to just post the content and wait for it to bring in the traffic, not even bothering to reply to comments. This creates another opportunity to stand out, in the sense that you can interact with your readers, making them feel that they’re a real part of the (cliched) “conversation”. Readers feel more valued, and thus are more willing to return. Some of the more successful sites are those that get visitors talking with the author and others.

This approach does require a lot of time, as your formulate responses designed not only to address the reader’s questions or opinions, but to encourage further discussion as well. But experience has taught me that bloggers can derive a lot of useful content from what their readers say. It could be a perspective that no one else has thought of, or the lowest price you’ve ever seen for that gadget you were reporting on; sometimes those comments provide enough material for that next post.

Stop Looking Like a Blog

Many mainstream blogs have decidedly dropped the traditional blog format, so you’re probably wondering: how does this help my blog stand out? The answer is that, by going beyond the typical blog format—which limits what visitors can see on their first visit to your site—you’re paying attention to your readers’ experience.

Expert blog theme coders are surprisingly very affordable (take a look at wedomarkup.com) and you’ll see what I mean, so it’s relatively easy to convert your blog into something that—while not following the traditional blog format—creates more appeal for a potentially wider readership.

So how do you stand out in your niche? Feel free to hit the comments below.

6 Reasons to Try Out Article Marketing

One marketing method that doesn’t get a lot of airplay among bloggers is article marketing. You’ll hear about social media, link baiting, and guest posting but article marketing seems like an outdated method that just doesn’t work for today’s sophisticated internet audience. Also, article marketing has gotten a bad rap since sleazy affiliate marketers use it to pitch their scammy products.

However, I’ve still found article marketing to be a great source of traffic. And in this post, I’ll give six reasons why you should try it out.

Now when I’m talking about article marketing, I’m talking about submitting articles to Ezine Articles. Ezine Articles is by far the best article directory to get published. They have a big audience including many visitors from Google because of their top rankings. There are other good article directories and sites that function like article directories but with a couple more features like Squidoo and HubPages. But in my experience, Ezine Articles is the place to go. Also, people have done traffic tests and Ezine Articles sends much more traffic than the other sites. So, you could try the other sites but it’s just better to spend that time submitting more articles to Ezine Articles.

And with that, let’s go to the reasons. [Read more]

Engaging Bloggers by Running Surveys

Apart from seeding press releases and product demos, another way to tap bloggers and online publishers for help would be to engage them in a partnership to run consumer surveys within their niche if influence.

For instance, you can discourse with three technology bloggers to run a series of surveys on consumer insight about mobile phones and in turn give out a good enough prize to a random draw of survey respondents. It gives you insight on the different sub niches of each blogger and you also get a more reliable and diverse sampling of the data.

The important thing here is that survey respondents should be able to immediately WANT the prize, so if you’re raffling off a 10USD coupon for Amazon, you may have to think bigger.

“Fair Use” and Publishing Media for Blogs and Videos

Lately I’ve been building videos of my dives in the Philippines for a SCUBA blog and one thing I’ve noticed is that it is becoming harder by the day to find a video service that recognizes fair use for ambient audio tracks. Sure there are always the royalty free audio selections but most of the “good stuff” are from records, independent label or not. Youtube started this, removing audio from edited videos despite the credits. Facebook is doing this as well. The subject of “fair use” can be scrutinized on and on.

In its most general sense, a fair use is any copying of copyrighted material done for a limited and “transformative” purpose such as to comment upon, criticize or parody a copyrighted work. Such uses can be done without permission from the copyright owner. Another way of putting this is that fair use is a defense against infringement. If your use qualifies under the definition above, and as defined more specifically in this section, then your use would not be considered an illegal infringement. [source]

So if I use only a partial track from a song, that’s considered fair use? If you’ve been editing videos and posting one man acts on your blog, what experiences have you had with material being taken down? Look, I’m not here to challenge the policy. I just want to initiate a discussion on what can and cannot be done. The reality of the situation is that on the web, the actual practice seems to overshadow the real policy.

WordPress.Com Goes Mobile

With the popularity of the iPhone, BlackBerry devices, and other web-capable smartphones, it’s easy to take for granted the fact that millions of people read blogs on their mobile phones. However, not all devices are capable of displaying full HTML. And even those that do, not all screens are large enough for comfortable viewing of web content.

With this in mind, WordPress.com has recently launched several mobile functionalities, namely a few mobile-oriented themes, and (limited) dashboard access from mobile browsers. WordPress.com will automatically detect whether a reader is using a mobile browser, and assuming you have set your site to display a mobile theme when viewed from a phone–activated by default–the reader sees a predominantly text interface, with any header image miniaturized for small screens.

For mobile browsers capable of full HTML, there’s an option to switch to full view. Commenting and limited navigation features are also available on mobile view, making the viewing experience as functional as possible. As for the mobile dashboard, this mostly just involves stats, posting and bookmarking. This is simple enough for those times when you absolutely have to blog about something, but don’t have access to a computer.

This is one functionality I’d like to see built-into self-hosted WordPress installations. While you can usually enable mobile viewing and posting thru plugins, having this out of the box would surely be one good way of expanding readership and giving you a wider array of options when mobile-blogging.

3 Great Marketing Strategies for Bloggers With Limited Time

If you’re anything like me, you don’t have much free time to blog. Many of us just don’t have the time to spend four hours a day blogging. We’ve got the day job, family, social life, and other things taking up our time. So anything that can really help improve our blog without spending too much time is a good thing.

In this post, I’ll share the top three methods in my experience that provide the best results in the least amount of time. One disclaimer before we start. Just because these methods don’t take a lot of time doesn’t mean you won’t be working hard to implement them. The methods are based on creating something of value and doing that requires a little bit of determination, focus, and effort.

With that in mind, let’s go to the first strategy.

1. Keyword-Based Posts

One thing I’ve found is that if you’re intentional with using keywords in your posts, you’ll get a lot more traffic than simply writing whatever comes to mind. I’ve checked out many of the popular blogs in my niche and they don’t use keywords well. These blogs have many more links than me but I outrank them for key search terms because I do keyword research and insert the keywords in my posts.

You don’t have to spend months learning SEO to use this tactic. The process is simple.

First, do some keyword research.

Check out your keyword logs and see what keywords are driving traffic to your site. You can usually find keyword patterns that you can capitalize on. For example, let’s say you have a pet blog. You check your logs and see that you have a bunch of traffic for the keyword labrador retriever training tips. With this in mind, you can be sure to get traffic by targeting similar keywords by just substituting the name of the dog breed. Create posts that go after keywords like dachshund training tips and german shepherd training tips.

Also, think of some common search terms in your niche and then enter them in Google’s keyword tool. The tool will give you a lot of related keywords that you can use.

Then, simply include the keywords in the title tags of your posts.

That’s all there is too it. Yet, many bloggers don’t take use this strategy and they end up missing out on a lot of traffic.

2. Flagship Posts

I got the term “flagship” from Chris Garrett’s great ebook, Killer Flagship Content. Definitely check it out for more information. Flagship posts are posts that have a ton of value. They are comprehensive and longer than your average post. They are the type of posts that people bookmark and send to their friends.

You won’t be writing these posts in less than an hour, but they are great for your blog. Most posts are just not very good. This is sad to say but if you look at the average blog, their posts are not memorable at all. Flagship posts are therefore great at setting yourself apart and helping readers remember your blog.

For example, one of the blogs in my niche has really grown to be very popular. They’ve only been around for less than a year and they don’t post very often – around two posts a week. But each post is very good. They average about 1200 words per post and they routinely go over the 1600 word mark. Each post has relevant pictures and they use formatting wisely with headings and paragraphs so the posts look organized and are attractive to the eye. Their posts are so meaty that they only show 2 posts on their front page.

You can tell they put a lot of effort into their posts. As a result, they have a big audience with many repeat visitors that regularly comment on their posts.

This strategy may need a little promotional push especially if you have a new blog and don’t have an existing audience to spread the word about your blog. That brings me to the third strategy.

3. Guest Posting on Popular Blogs

Sending a guest post to a top blog and then having them publish it brings many dividends. You get your blog exposed to a big readership base and you connect yourself to a top blogger. Also, you brand yourself as an authority figure since you were able to get published on a reputable site.

The quality of your guest post is important. Most top blogs won’t take any post. They are looking for something of high quality. As such, I would treat these posts just like flagship posts from the previous strategy. Also, the better your post is, the more likely people will visit your blog and become a regular reader.

If you can’t seem to get published on the top blogs, then a publishing on popular forum can be an alternative. However, it shouldn’t be too hard to get a guest post on top blogs as long as you have a really good post for them. Therefore, don’t be afraid to send them quality guest posts. Blogs are always looking for fresh content so you have a great chance of being published.

Trade your money for our time and effort. Performancing offers blog management services to improve your blog.

So What Should the Performancing Hive be Really About?

We’re currently in the process of revamping the Performancing Hive, Performancing’s paid subscription community. Like the current sign-up page says, Hive “exists to provide you the help you need to increase the performance of your blog.” As we take steps to improve Hive and re-examine the focus of the community—not to mention Performancing itself—we would very much like to hear from you. [Read more]

Case: Measuring Word of Mouth via Bloggers

Back in 2007, I partnered with a PR agency that handled a french inspired fast food company serving mainly breads and pasta. They were looking into doing a “blogger meet up” and experiment with the idea of measuring word of mouth. They were in the process of launching a new product, which happened to be a special blend of spiked coffee; one of those amaretto or Bailey’s infused mixes.
[Read more]