As most of you know, I run a music blog in the UK, and I’m mostly using AdSense for advertising. After reading about the sale of AuctionAds, I wondered if any of you folks were using AuctionAds on your sites.
I’m interested to know how fast it is (does it cause pages to load slowly), what the quality of adverts is and how good the rate of return is.
This post was written by Matt Jones, the author of Blogging Fingers
As I’m sure you know it’s that amusing time of year when the displayable Google Page Rank is about to be updated and bloggers run about like headless chickens making sure everything is ready. There are always those that mock the bloggers who get over hyped up about the update, but deep down we all know they are exited too. It’s like a special Christmas just for bloggers and webmasters to enjoy.
I decided to ask, “What have you done to prepare” over at the BlogLight.ning forum where I received some interesting responses.
“I’ve done a lot of commenting on high PR ‘dofolllow’ blogs, and I’ve made sure to keep posting every possible day, often more than once.”
Jeremy Hobbs, who is hoping for a PR3 or above.
“I wrote some good articles that caught some attention links, I did a few link exchanges a while ago and also got mentioned in some high PR websites .”
CristianR, who is hoping for a PR4 or above.
“The only thing that I have really done is participate in a few memes/trains that were making the rounds. To pay the favor back to others, I’ve continued with my weekly Speedlinking feature to spread the link love out to other blogs as well.”
Derek Semmler, who is hoping for a PR5.
It seems that every 3 months when the Page Rank update comes about, people start squawking about how it does not increase traffic and we shouldn’t get so obsessed with it. There’s always 1 person who ‘cleverly’ points out that PR is constantly being updated behind the scenes anyway.
While I agree obsessing over a single statistic (or any statistics) is a bad thing, its a fact that the higher your displayable page rank you have the more you can charge when selling sidebar links, in post links, reviews or even when selling the entire blog. Other than traffic, Page Rank is the most important factor in deciding how much money can be made from your blog.
What have you done to prepare?
When Andy Hagans says something, I listen. And Andy Hagans (following Aaron Wall) says that META descriptions are back and important, not for keyword stuffing, so much as page differentiation.
Did you know that the default for most WordPress themes is to NOT include a META description? While title tags remain, in my view, the single most important SEO factor, one of the biggest problems you’ll face with any new-ish site is getting each page indexed. Google evaluates each page to see if it is important enough and different enough to separately indexed. If not, then you’ll find many of your pages going supplemental.
So how does one go about differentiating her site? Well, title tags are a start. But they aren’t enough. The on-page content should be at least 100 words. But sometimes that’s not enough. So what else can you do to help GOOG differentiate your pages and see them as index worthy? Make sure that every page has a unique META description.
But as I said, most WordPress themes don’t have META description code built in. That’s where this post comes in. Below, I include the code for what I think of as two variations of an ideal WordPress META description.
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In the above code, you are basing the description completely on the title of the page. That’s a good start, and it may be the best option for complete differentiation, but in my view, a more complete solution would be something like the following addition
This page contains information about"/>
So what are your thoughts? What do you use to generate descriptions for your individual WordPress pages? If you’re not into an automated soluton via code, what are some of the plugins that you use?
When it comes to making money on the Internet, or more specifically with a blog, there are simply so many options out there, it can be a little overwhelming for someone starting out, trying to earn a living through blogging or through creating a website community. One of the highest paying and easiest to use ways to make money is with affiliate programs. Affiliate Marketing is a lot simpler than the blogging and marketing ‘gurus’ would like you to think, and I whipped up a questions and answers blog post, highlighting a conversation I had with a client a few weeks back.
Question – What’s the single easiest way to start Affiliate Marketing right now?
This is an incredibly difficult question to answer, let alone to start with… In Affiliate Marketing, relying on a ‘single’ technique or tactic, even just to get you going, is suicidal. You need to be using a wide range of different methods to drive traffic through your affiliate links – anything from PPC to blogging, SEO to viral marketing… It’s really up to you. In the Affiliate Defined videos I’m creating, there are some truly unique tactics, tricks, tips and ideas to get you started.
Question – Do you need a big website to successfully use Affiliate Marketing?
Absolutely not! You don’t even NEED a website! There are so many ways you can reach an audience on the Internet (whether you choose video marketing on sites like YouTube or PayPerClick advertising on networks like AdWords, maybe even a bit of t-shirt marketing from time to time) it’s reached a point where a website isn’t actually needed to earn an income online, and that’s what Affiliate Marketing is all about. Promoting other people’s products on other people’s websites!
Question – Do I need to have a big list of prospects to become a successful affiliate?
Let me tell you a secret… For the first five months as an Affiliate Marketer, I had NO list. NONE. Not even a single person. Building my list was initially slow (but once I knew how to build it I was getting opt-ins by the minute) and I didn’t see any profits at all. Why? I hadn’t built that vitally important relationship with my list. I was sending them the freebies to keep them on my newsletter, reading what I had to say, but they still didn’t have a clue who I was or what I was trying to achieve. You need to connect with your list. Tell them the odd funny story. Share an embarrassing secret or two.
So my answer to that question? No. You don’t need a list to be a successful Super-Affiliate, though admittedly, without one, I wouldn’t be earning half of what I do earn today. You live and learn I guess.
Question – Fair enough. You’ve made your point. So where can I start building my list?
My advice would be to check out GetResponse, the auto-responder I use. Their deliverability rates are second to none, their support is fantastic with forums, e-mail support, live chat and a great phoneline all at the disposal of members to use as frequently (or infrequently, as the case may be) as they wish. I’ve never had any reason to really contact the GetResponse support seeing as they have some excellent Camtasia walkthroughs on hand to teach the basics – though it’s great to know that if you do run into an issue, someone is just on the other end of a telephone.
Question – Right. So I don’t need a website or a list?
STRONGLY NOT ADVISED, but no. I guess it’s not entirely essential, however without one or the other you’ll certainly be in a bit of a pickle. There’s no excuse for not having a blog or a website though, with free ones easily creatable at Blogger.com alongside a whole host of other ‘free hosting’ websites. Naturally I recommend a self-hosted, top-level-domain site, but under some circumstances this isn’t always possible. Play around and give it your best shot though.
Question – What would be your number one piece of advice to an affiliate marketing newbie?
Selecting a single point would be incredibly hard, so I’d like to touch on a few related points, mainly focusing on mindset. One – Be yourself. You’ve heard it before and I’ll say it again… Don’t try to be someone or something that you’re not. The truth worms it way outta the can eventually. Two – Keep believing. Self-belief and motivation is everything in the fast-paced Affiliate Marketing arena. If you’re not first – you’re last. If you don’t reach your targets – you lose. You need to stay with it. Stress and depression are common when getting started and mental barriers come by the dozen. Doubt. Worry. Regret. Uncertainty. “I wish I hadn’t said that.” – “I hope I made the right choice… ?” – “I’m scared… What if it doesn’t work?” It’s a painful uphill struggle, but from the top of the hill it’s plain sailing.
Expect Part Two sometime soon, and make sure to sign up at Affiliate Defined for more affiliate marketing tips. But for now, David Wilkinson – 13-Year Old ProBlogger, signing out.
HTML title tags are, arguably, the single most important SEO ranking factor. Nailing the title tag could be the most important thing you do all year in your blog’s SEO campaign. Yet the average blogger simply inherits her WordPress theme’s title tag, without shaping it into SEO perfection. In this article I’m giving you the code for what I think are the two most optimal WordPress title tags.
I’ve been using the “Cutline” title tag code for the longest time, assuming that it was the best out there (and in some cases, it very well may be). But the other day, I decided to question all my basic blogging assumptions and re-think some critical questions from scratch. Having done that, I’ve come up with the following SEO optimized title tag code to place in your header file:
This is optimized for SEO, not necessarily for usability. For example, if branding is important to you, you might prefer the Cutline title code, a version of which I include here:
The main difference here is whether or not the name of your blog gets included in the title of every page. It is my view that by putting your blog title in the title tag of every post, you dilute the SEO value of your article’s title.
One cool feature of EatonWeb that I’ve been playing with a lot lately is the Advanced Account historical trending data. While this is a “pay” feature, I can’t help but love having historical trends in PageRank, Alexa, Technorati, Site Visibility, Linkage, etc. all in one place.
With EatonWeb’s Advanced Stats feature, you get historical trending data for your blog starting the day your blog is entered into the directory. I’ve setup a sample of this feature using data from my car blog RideLust, which you can see by clicking here.
For an idea of what the historical trending graphs look like I’ve included a screenshot below:
I took part in a radio interview yesterday. It was with the work at home radio network and had to do with blogging as career choice. My interviewer was most interested in how to earn money through blogging, especially through monetizing one’s own blogs. I told her what I told everyone else: when you’re just starting out, money should be your last concern.
I can’t tell you how many brand spanking new blogs I’ve come across that receive a couple of visitors a day, yet have big, flashing ads on either side. This tells me two things:
So I ask you, how can you earn money with a blog receiving no traffic?
If you build it they will come
If you’re asking my opinion, and I’m assuming you are since you’re reading this, I’d say build up traffic. Don’t waste your efforts on ads; the money will come in time if that’s what you’re after. Instead write pages and pages of good, useful content. Offer your readers sound advice, humorous anecdotes and links to important resources. Once you have at least a dozen pages written, it’s time to bring in the traffic. You can do this in many ways. When you’re just starting out, I’d recommend:
Visiting other blogs and commenting. Don’t leave spammy “hey nice blog, check out my content” comments, instead, offer your point of view and that’s it. You’ll notice a spot to drop your link in the heading boxes, that’ll do just fine.
Visiting online forums. Just as with commenting, you don’t want to seem spammy. Offer a useful point of view and drop your link in the signature. If you offer a useful opinion, people will want to visit your blog.
Digg, Stumble Upon and other social networking and media sites. If you believe you wrote something brilliant, take advantage of the different social media sites. You may not make it to Digg’s first page, but there might be a person or two interested in reading what you have to say.
Offering up your services as a guest blogger. A great way to drive traffic is by guest blogging on someone else’s blog. Trust me, I know. A couple of months back, I was a guest blogger for Darren Rowse and traffic to all my blogs soared.
Installing a stat tracker. I use Site Meter and Google Analytics (and of course, PMetrics). Stat trackers are a great way to tell why people come to your blog. You’ll learn which topics and keywords are most popular, giving you an idea of what type of content to write. That isn’t to say you should revolve your blog around keywords and search terms. Nothing turns me off more than a blog filled with obvious keywords.
Writing lots of content. The more great content you write, the more pages will be indexed by Google and other search engines and the more people will visit your blog.
Now, I hate to harp on this, but I’ll say it again. All this takes time. It takes time to achieve Google and Alexa rankings, it takes time for people to find your blog and it takes time to achieve the amount of traffic likely to enable you to earn a decent income from your blog. In fact, I’ll venture to say not everyone can expect to earn a revenue check each month.
If you truly want to make money blogging, you’re going to have to work hard to bring in the masses. Once the traffic is flowing, once you have a great community built up, once your name is out there, then, and only then, should you worry about the ads.
The other day, I was having an abysmal (I mean horrid) day with AdSense on PopCrunch. I’d only gotten about $30 for the day and it was about 5:30pm.
As many of you know, a bad day of AdSense can put you in a bad mood unless you’re real careful. Well, I wasn’t very happy when I went to dinner. When I came back, only about 45 minutes later, AdSense revenue had shot up to about $74.
Reporting delay, I thought. So I went to play a little Nintendo Wii (right now I’m playing through the Rookie challenge in The Bigs).
Went back to my office about an hour later to check AdSense (I’m compulsive just like you). AdSense revenue had shot up to $124.
This ain’t no reporting delay, I thought to myself. Something’s going down. WTF?
So I rushed over to my pMetrics account for PopCrunch to analyze live traffic patterns. As usual, it was a number one slot on the Google SERPS for a hot celebrity topic. Loads of traffic poured in.
But loads of traffic pour in all the time, and I never see this kind of drastic AdSense rocketing.
By the time I got done analyzing pMetrics data and the on-page text for the hot article, I checked AdSense again. $185. Then I took a walk with my wife for about an hour (I was in a good mood at this point;-) When I got back, it was at $227.
Things started to slow down at this point, and I won’t give you the final numbers. But it is sufficient to point out that something weird was happening with CTR. It’s not as though I’d never seen traffic flow like this. There was either something distinct about the ads being served or the type of people visiting the site.
Well, without giving too much away, let’s just say that it turns out to have been related to the type of visitors that Google was sending to the site (people who are passionately searching for something specific tend to be good ad clickers).
So why did I tell this story? Well, for two reasons. First, because without pMetrics I wouldn’t have been able to solve the anomaly, pretty much in real-time. Second, because by solving the problem, I was able to quickly reinforce the hot content with supplemental articles and picked up more of the long-tail (in fact, it the long tail is still trickling in).
The next time you notice an AdSense anomaly, why not use pMetrics live stats to stay ahead of the curve, and capitalize? Because on the net, timing is everything and with pMetrics you get stats…live.