Work at Home Based Business

Archive for the ‘Blogging’ Category

If you’re like many online business owners today then you’ve set up your internet presence within the framework of a blog.  This is a smart move because, as any savvy internet marketer will tell you, blogs tend to perform better in the search engines than static sites.  This is due to a number of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that the major search engines place a higher value on sites that offer new information on a consistent basis.

If your business model is centered around generating revenue with contextual advertising or affiliate programs then you may already know that churning out a large volume of posts and information is vital to increasing your profits.  It is true that you can still earn a decent amount with only a handful of high-ranking posts that target highly-searched keywords, but experienced bloggers know that going after so-called “long tails” is also worthwhile.

By going after “long tail” keyword phrases I’m referring to those which tend to be three words or longer and have what could be considered relatively low search volume.  They are more obscure terms that are easier to rank for but deliver less revenue because few searchers use them when looking for information.  Thus, ranking highly for “cheap platinum wedding rings” is much easier than ranking for “wedding rings”, though the latter phrase might see a hundred times more search engine traffic than the former.

Essentially it comes down to two different strategies.  Either you can write huge numbers of posts that target long tail terms or you can focus on targeting more popular keyword phrases with less frequent posts.  Each has its pros and cons, but I feel that the long tail is overlooked much too often.  By using the long tail approach you can worry less about having to earn inbound links, and focus more on simply pumping out consistent and useful content for your site.  The challenge becomes not so much fending off competitors but rather finding the motivation to write one or more informative posts per day, which in my book is a pretty good trade-off.  Of course I’m not saying to ignore keyword phrase volume altogether, but it might be a good idea to think about zeroing in on phrases that might only draw a hundred visitors a month instead of ten thousand.  You can make up for it with volume.

As I said, this might not be new information for some online business owners, especially those who earn a living with contextual ads or affiliate programs.  I have noticed, however, that people who use a blog as an ecommerce platform tend to be less disciplined about generating site content.  They tend to be satisfied when all their product pages and posts have been published, and they completely lose sight of the benefits that consistent blogging can provide them.  In essence, they might as well have a static site, and this fact seriously limits their earning power, even if they’re pursuing one of the best online business ideas.

When I approach these folks and inform them that they are not leveraging their blogging platform to its full potential they usually complain that they don’t know what to talk about.  For these people the concept of the “long tail” has either been forgotten or discarded, but ignoring it is a huge mistake.  If you have an online store that was built using Wordpress, Typepad, or any other blogging platform then you have an enormous opportunity to take market share simply by coming up with weekly or daily fresh content!  If you’re trying to figure out how to make a lot of money with your online store then you should know that you can greatly expand its reach by adding more posts to capture more potential business.

Let’s say, for example, that you sell yard signs via your site.  You could talk about everything from how to keep yard signs clean, to how to design it for maximum impact, to what qualities to look for in a sign maker.  The possibilities are endless.  It’s not even so important that each post tackles a major concept or issue; you just need to churn out as much content as humanly possible in order to capture as much of the long tail as you can.  This way there is less pressure on you to rank #1 for “yard signs” because the hundreds of other posts on your site are combining to pull in a huge amount of targeted traffic on their own.  It’s really just a matter of going wide or going deep.  Ideally, you would do both, but it’s easier in the beginning to rank for the long tail keyword phrases, and then you can go after the “big fish” later on down the road.

A lot of people who have lost their jobs lately are looking for work at home options so that they can make money anywhere. They need to be able to care for their children and home as well as continue bringing in an income in an economy where there are few jobs.

Fortunately, there are a handful of online resources, including us here at the Work at Home Blog, that give honest advice to help people who are looking for make money anywhere options.

Here are a few of my best work at home ideas:

1. Project Payday is always a feasible make money from anywhere choice if you need to make a little bit of money quickly. It’s free to sign up and if you work at it a few hours a day, you can realistically earn a couple hundred dollars per day.

2. Develop some sort of digital product such as an e-book or software and sell it on places like eBay, Plimus, Clickbank, CJ, Lulu Self-Publishing, etc. If you create an affiliate program, you can attract vendors who will help to sell your e-product. Since the item is electronic, this is an ideal way to make money anywhere in the world!

3. Join other make money anywhere affiliate programs from CJ or Clickbank that are relevant to any websites or blogs that you own and promote them to your readers/search engine traffic.

4. Make Adsense blogs with helpful content that target narrow niches so you can easily rank on page one of the search engines when people look up those keywords! This is also a great way to make money anywhere! I personally utilize this one all the time myself!

Don’t wait for your unemployment benefits to run out. Start one or all of these “make money anywhere” methods today so that making money online can become a reality for you. Then, even when the economy improves, you won’t need to get a job unless you want to!

To Your Success,

Janet Smith

If you have a blog and it gets a decent amount of traffic then you are probably looking for ways to earn money from it. One of the best ways to make money blogging is to sell advertising on it. All you have to do at this point is find people who want to pay you to advertise on your blog. That might sound difficult but it can actually be done fairly easy. In this post I will give you some useful tips for finding blog advertisers

Here are some ways to find advertisers for your blog so you can make more money from it…

1. Google your main keyword phrase and a few of your secondary keyword phrases. Now, take a look at the Adwords ads on the right hand side of the search results. These ads are from businesses and entrepreneurs who are promoting websites in your niche to make money, and they are paying for traffic. You already know they are willing to spend money advertising for your keywords, so why not try to contact them and see if they want to advertise on your blog? They could buy a banner or text link on your blog for a set dollar amount per month.

2. Find other sites/blogs in the same niche, or similar niches, as yours that sell advertising and contact the people advertising on them to let them know you also sell ads on your site. You could even ask the blog owner where he gets his advertisers. Most bloggers are very helpful and would be happy to give you some information.

3. Go to the sections of the Warrior Forum, Sitepoint, and Digitalpoint where you can post that you are selling advertising. That should get you quite a few new advertisers. You could also post a Warrior Special Offer (WSO) for ads spots on your blog.

4. Check out various affiliate networks and see if you can find affiliates who might be interested in advertising on your blog.

5. Take a look at offline advertisers. This one is a little more complicated because you are dealing with people who are not usually as internet savvy as those above. However, if you look in newspapers and magazines in your local area, you might find businesses in your niche that would be interested in advertising on your blog. You’ll probably have to educate them a little so preparing a short report with screen shots of traffic and keywords would be a good idea. Don’t talk down to these folks because they aren’t stupid, but realize that terms you consider to be common (like RSS) are a foreign language to them.

That is about all you really need to find advertisers so you can make money from your blog. There are plenty of other ways to make money blogging but selling advertising is definitely one of the best. Go find a few new advertisers right now using the methods above and before you know it you will be a master at it.

This blog is about working from home and making money online with your own home based business. In order to do that you need traffic to your website, which is visitors to your business. The following lists are very important for getting traffic and helping you make money so I felt I had to share them with you. The first is a copy/paste from a thread at the Digitalpoint forums. After that is another list more related to blogs.

These 101 tips to increase traffic are good for almost any website…

1) Yahoo Answers.

2) Myspace.com

3) Yahoo Groups

4) Stumbleupon.com

5) Forums

6) Craigslist.org

7) Site maps

8. E-Book Giveaway

9) Website Design

10) Submit To Directories

11) Tell a Friend

12) Search Engine Optimization

13) Squidoo.com

14) Social bookmarking sites

15) Article Promotion

16) Site Explorer

17) Epinion.com

18. Alexa.com

19) Newsletter Box

20) Scribd

21) Get Links from Relevant Websites

22) Increase the Size of Your Site

22) Send out Press Releases

23) Advertise On Online classified Ad Sites

24) Use Firefox Plug-in

25) Add a Forum to Your Site

26) Add a Blog to Your Site

27) Optimize Your Blog for The Search Engines

28. Comment on Other Peoples Blogs

29) MySpace News

30) Digg

31) Banner Exchanges

32) Traffic Exchanges

33) Pop Unders

34) Technorati and ping it when your blog content changes

35) Use a ping service like pingomatic to ping RSS aggregators

36) Submit your blog to all of the RSS directories

37) Link to other blogs in your posts

38. Use Stumbleupon to stumble your posts.

39) Ask your readers to submit your posts to social bookmarking sites (Digg, Reddit, etc.)

40) Start a group blog.

41) Join SpicyPage and promote your blog

42) Join a webring.

43) Sign up for BlogWoods and promote your blog

44) Exchange Ads (not blogroll links) with complementary blogs.

45) Trade blog roll links with related blogs.

46) Use Twitter

47) Publish videos on YouTube

4 Search for Wikis related to your.

49) Join Hub pages and post links to your blog from articles you write.

50) Pray.

51) Create a MySpace Page. Put your blog on it, and get some friends.

52) Tell people you will link back to them if they review your blog

53) Most brands are not well established online, you review related content and it will rank well.

54) Review relevant products on Amazon.com.

55) Create product lists on Amazon.com

56) Review related sites on Alexa

57) Review products and services on shopping search engines.

58. Swap some links.

59) Try to get links from within the content of relevant content pages.

60) Sell items on eBay.

61) Target niche social news sites like DZone, Sphinn or Hugg

62) Whenever you send an email to someone, always add your website url as a signature.

63) Do email signature swaps

64) Tag blog posts at social bookmarking sites

65) Add photos to your blog with appropriate keywords – Google Images generates traffic too.

66) Tag blog photos at Flicker

67) Make a custom 404-error page for your website. You can provide a link back to your main website or even try to monetize it by offering a related affiliate program within your niche.

68. Outsource grunt work.

69) After someone orders from you offer a one-time offer that compliments your product.

70) Participate in Blog Carnivals

71) create a network of blogs in different niches, and then link them together

72) Give away stock images with a wee watermark of your URL

73) Find and discuss memes

74) Create a Yahoo Group in the niche your site sits.

75) Bookmark your site on Del.icio.us and if you’re really keen, add a Del.icio.us button to your homepage.

76) Place a free ad for your company on Gumtree.

77) Syndicate your site’s content by using an RSS feeds.

7 Submit your RSS feeds to aggregator sites.

79) Don’t worry about PageRank – worrying about PageRank is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum.*

80) Get a custom t-shirt made with your website URL on it, and wear it often.

81) Get a custom t-shirt made with your website URL on it, and wear it often.

82) Send out a newsletter!

83) Giving away an eBook is an excellent way to generate word-of-mouth about your site.

84) Ask bloggers and other Web site owners to review your site and/or products.

85) Add a “Tell a Friend” function to your site, so people can easily recommend you to their mates.

86) Share your banners on banner exchange sites.

87) Create a “lense” for your site on Squidoo

8 Do you have really hot content on your site that geeks would love? If so Slashdot will bring you a mass of traffic.

89) upload a favicon.gif file so that your users have a nice icon when they bookmark your site.

90) Set up a feed on MyYahoo.com so your site gets regularly spidered by the Yahoo search

91) Use Ping-0-matic to ping blog directories. Do this every time you publish.

92) Print your blog URL on your business cards, brochures and flyers.

93) Use Trackback links when you quote or refer to other blog posts.

94) Increase the list you ping

95) Use Facebook

96) Social Networking

97) Micro

9 Email Marketing

99) RSS Feeds

100) Get outside links to internal pages

101) Use free hosting and build sites and link them back to your main site.

This list is more geared towards blogs. I did cut/paste from this excellent blog post: 101 FREE Ways To Increase Your Blog Traffic

1. Join MyBlogLog, add friends, and join communities.
2. Sign up for Technorati and ping it when your blog content changes.
3. Use a ping service like pingomatic to ping RSS aggregators.
4. Submit your blog to all of the directories on Robin Good’s list of RSS directories.
5. Use trackbacks.
6. Leave comments on blogs in related niches.
7. Tell your friends about your blog and specific posts.
8. Put your blog URL in your forum signatures.
9. Create link bait.
10. Tell Your newsletter subscribers about your blog.
11. Write press releases for your blog.
12. Link liberally to other blogs in your posts (many bloggers check who links to them).
13. Tag your posts using Technorati tags or a tag plug-in.
14. Submit your posts to multiple social bookmarking sites using OnlyWire.
15. Use Stumbleupon to stumble your posts.
16. Answer questions on Yahoo answers with the answers on your blog.
17. Answer questions on forums related to your niche with a link to one of your blog posts that answers the question.
18. Set up a feed on MyYahoo so that Yahoo keeps better track of your blog.
19. Make lists (My Top 5…, Ten Things…, etc.). Many of the most popular blog posts are lists like this one.
20. Use pictures. Most of the top trafficed blogs use pictures in their posts.
21. Use video on your blog.
22. Find out what people want to learn about in your blog’s niche and write about it.
23. Be the first to break a news story.
24. Use keyword research to find good keywords to use in your posts.
25. Write controversial posts.
26. Strongly Agree or strongly disagree with other bloggers and write about it with a link to their post.
27. Make it easy for your readers to sign up for your RSS feed.
28. Make it easy for your readers to Digg your posts.
29. Ask your readers to submit your posts to social bookmarking sites (Digg, Reddit, etc.).
30. Interview well known people in your industry (it’s working well for me).
31. Give credit to the blogs that inspire your posts.
32. Don’t be boring.
33. Write for beginners.
34. Participate in group writing projects.
35. Participate in blog memes.
36. Create a blog meme and tag your friends.
37. Participate in blog carnivals.
38. Post at different times of the day.
39. Submit your best posts to article directories.
40. Write Killer Content .
41. Start a group blog. These tend to get more traffic, because more people are creating conent and more people are promoting it.
42. Have guest posters.
43. Create a blog meme and tag an A-list blogger who you like.
44. Submit your blog to regular web directories (like DMOZ, etc.).
45. Join SpicyPage and promote your blog on it.
46. Join a blog webring.
47. Sign up for BlogWoods and promote your blog on it.
48. Join LinkAndBlog and do link and blog challenges.
49. Submit your best posts to Netscape.
50. Exchange Ads (not blogroll links) with complementary blogs.
51. Trade blog roll links with related blogs.
52. Sign up for Rojo. Subscribe to your feed and click “add mojo” on your better articles.
53. Add a plug-in to notify users of new comments (I REALLY need to do this).
54. Make it easy for your visitors to submit your post to ALL social bookmarking sites (not just Digg).
55. Add a tell-a-friend script or plug-in to your posts.
56. Make it easy for your visitors to bookmark your page in their browser.
57. Make it easy for people to link to your blog.
58. Use easy to read fonts.
59. Use a professional looking blog design.
60. Make your blog easy to navigate.
61. Highlight your most popular posts.
62. Write posts that ask provocative questions.
63. Use questions for the title of your blog posts (you knew that was coming).
64. Use good keywords in your post titles.
65. Reply to every question you get through email.
66. Reply to every question you get on your blog.
67. E-mail other bloggers about your really good post(s) (breaking news posts).
68. Offer free stuff related to your niche (tools, ebooks, etc).
69. Run a contest.
70. Publish videos on YouTube with the URL for your site at the beginning and end of the video.
71. Install a translation plug-in or use a translation service to translate your blog into foreign languages.
72. Put Your URL on everything that goes out of your house (business cards, stationary, mailing labels, etc.).
73. Go through listible.com’s list of web 2.0 sites and promote your blog on all web 2.0 sites that apply.
74. Search for Wikis related to your niche to submit your blog to. For example, for this blog the search phrase would be “make money online wiki” or “internet marketing wiki”.
75. Give regular polls (use a poll plug-in like democracy for this).
76. Add trivia quiz pages.
77. Add ecard pages.
78. Add a forum for your visitors to discuss more on your niche.
79. Add a wiki to your blog .
80. Join Hubpages and post links to your blog from articles you write.
81. Join Blink List and make a list of blogs with your blog in it.
82. Join 43 Things and write a list of 43 things you want to achieve (include your blog url in the list).
83. Join Blogger Party (and/or other free blog systems). Then write posts that link back to your blog.
84. Make a Squidoo lens (or more than one) with a link to your blog.
85. Provide Wikipedia articles with links to your blog where it makes sense.
86. Tell people you will link back to them if they review your blog (like John Chow).
87. Join Blog Catalog (kind of like MyBlogLog).
88. Create a MySpace Page. Put your blog on it, and get some friends.
89. Use SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
90. Use good grammar. People will be happy with your writing.
91. Submit your blog to directories in your niche.
92. Email or Instant message your friends to Digg, stumbelupon, etc. your post.
93. Link to your blog from other websites and blogs you own.
94. Write a post about the top x bloggers in your niche or state or country, etc. Then tell them about, so they will want to link back to you.
95. Promote your posts on related newsgroups.
96. Post frequently.
97. Submit your site to free website review sites like coolsiteoftheday.
98. Search for .edu sites with link pages, forums, directories, and wikis to submit your link to.
99. Give out blogging awards and tell the bloggers you are giving the awards to about it.
100. Pray. (That’s just always good advice)…
101. Make a 101 list.

BONUS:102. Think outside the box.

Those should keep you busy for quite a while and help you make money online!

When you are trying to make money with articles, the beauty of it is that you don’t really need previous career related experience and that you can learn the ropes as you go. That being said, there are some skills that you will need to teach yourself or pick up along the way to make your sites successful. You can’t go in not knowing anything, not learning anything, and still expect to make a good income (or any income at all).

First, you will need to know how to pick out the correct articles to make your sites successful. There are many types of content, from free content to high dollar content, and each comes with its own advantages and disadvantages (although high dollar content is more likely to give you a successful site in the end).

Second, you will need to know how to choose keywords that can help you get a good amount of traffic, without being too competitive to get on the first or second page. If you choose highly competitive keywords that are used by large, mammoth website, you are likely to never get up to those much needed first two pages.

Third, you will need to know how to optimize your websites for various search engines. Search engine optimization skills will allow you to get high rankings for your chosen niche keywords, which will help to get visitors and make profit.

Fourth, if you opt for a large website that you will focus most of your internet marketing career on, you will also need to know how to market your website to your intended audience through paid banner ads and text links. If you prefer very small 2-5 page niche sites, then promoting all of them this way will not be cost effective and will eat up more profits than it is worth.

If you can capture some of these skills and attack them aggressively during your first few small websites or the first few months of a larger website, then you will eventually become an expert.  Since you can learn the ropes first hand on your own, the only thing that you will need to do before you begin your new career is to read up on how to get started (maybe purchase an internet marketing e-book or two) and make sure that you have the funds available to start a small site.