Archive for the ‘Blog Revenue’ Category


Google first page: how one blog quickly made it to Google’s first page

I’ve written other blog posts with step by step tips on getting your website or blog onto Google’s first page search results.

(That’s important because 90% of Google searchers don’t look past the first page of results!)

One of my other sites recently made it to the first page of Google for a particular search phrase with decent traffic and mid-level competition.

Here’s what I did:

This blog’s sister site is TwitterPowerTool. After doing some research about popular search keywords regarding Twitter, I noticed that one phrase was particularly promising.

According to the FREE Google AdWords Keyword Tool, the phrase “twitter ideas” gets about 4000 global monthly searches.

Then I went to Google to see how many websites are already competing for the phrase “twitter ideas.”

To do this, first I made sure I was “signed out” of Google, by looking at the top right hand side of the Google.com homepage. My browser is Firefox, so then I went under Tools/Clear Recent History and selected that.

Finally, I refreshed the Google.com page.

Doing all that gives you a closer approximation to the results a stranger would see when searching for a particular phrase on Google. If you don’t do that before you do your research on keyword competition, the results you get will reflect only your personal searches, and those won’t give you an accurate, universal picture of what’s being prioritized by Google.

After I did all that “cache clearing,” I typed “twitter ideas” into Google.com. (Note: I used quotation marks around the phrase, just like that — that’s important.)

Looking right under the Google search field, it said “About 37,200 results.”

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Affiliate marketing strategy: PPC, PPP and other affiliate marketing programs

Affiliate marketing programs has never been as popular before as it is today.  Why? The most probable reason, however, could be the fact that the benefits of affiliate marketing have become clearer to a lot of people now than they were before.

There are different types of affiliate marketing.

The most basic affiliate marketing programs, however, fall under two categories: pay-per-click (PPC), and pay-per-performance (PPP).

* Pay Per Click (PPC)
PPC is the most popular type of affiliate marketing for affiliates with small websites, and probably the easiest way for them to earn money.  In this affiliate marketing type, the merchant pays his affiliate whenever a visitor is referred to his site, that is whenever someone clicks through the merchant’s banner or text ads.

The affiliate gets paid a certain amount even if the visitor he referred does not purchase anything from the merchant’s site.  However, typical fees for PPC affiliate programs are small, usually not exceeding a dollar for every click.

* Pay Per Performance (PPP)
PPP affiliate marketing is the most popular among merchant and is also the most lucrative type for the affiliates.  In this type of affiliate program, the merchant only pays the affiliate whenever his referral translates into an action — that is whenever the visitor he has referred actually buys something from the merchant’s site or when the visitor becomes a lead.  This means a lot of savings for the merchant.

On the other hand, it becomes the most lucrative type for the dedicated affiliate, for commissions in PPP affiliate marketing usually comes in the range of 15% to 20% of the actual product sales.

Pay-per-performance affiliate marketing can be further classified into two popular types: pay-per-sales (PPS) and pay-per-lead (PPL).

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FREE WordPress theme webinar: Socrates, WordPress and more

This blog uses the Socrates WordPress theme. I like it so much I use this theme on many of my other blogs.

As you can see from features such as the rotating top banner, the social media “slider” and the built-in ClickBank widget, the Socrates theme for WordPress is optimized for those who want to make money blogging.

Socrates is also the easiest WordPress theme I ever installed. When I had a question about how to customize the look of my blog, their support staff answered immediately.

There’s even a 30-day free trial.

So I’m very impressed by this WordPress theme.

Today I received this email:

Hi Socrates Customer,

It’s hard to believe it only been eight months since the Socrates Premium WordPress Theme was released.  The theme has become more popular than we ever imagined.

In fact, today we just hit our 7,000th customer.

So to celebrate I thought it would be a great idea to hold an exclusive webinar for our customers.

Whether you’re an active Socrates user or a trial customer I invite you to join me on Wednesday, December 29 at 7PM EST for a Socrates overview and Q&A webinar.

For Trial users I’ll show you how to fully setup and install Socrates in under 10 minutes, and then I’ll take any and all questions from customers for the next 50 minutes

Space is Limited…

Date: Wednesday, December 15, 2010 7:00 PM – 8:00 PM EST

Reserve Your Seat here.

I hope to see you there.

To Your Socrates Success!  Dan Nickerson

This webinar would be a great way to get a walk through of all the Socrates features.

Again, I’ve tried (and hated!) a bunch of other WordPress themes, so I highly recommend Socrates for easy install, number of features and ease of use.

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How to make money blogging with PayPerPost

PayPerPost is an upfront, fairly easy way to make money with your blog. You won’t get rich through PayPerPost or with any other similar service, but if you’re a fast, accurate writer, it’s a good way to make an extra $20 or so once in a while.

Through PayPerPost, advertisers ask bloggers to write short (100-200 word) posts about their product, service or website. Usually, the advertisers are websites hoping to get good reviews or even just inbound links to help raise their ranking in Google.

Here’s how it works:

I’ll get an email from PayPerPost telling me there’s an opportunity for me. I’ll sign in and check it out. You can reject any opportunity you aren’t interested in.

If the advertiser doesn’t expect too much for too little (such as a 300 word post for only $10) and they don’t seem to be running a scam, I’ll click on “Take This Opp.”

Let’s say the advertiser is a Miami Beach real estate company that wants me to post about its new website and its cool features. I’ll write up a post about the Miami Beach site on my own blog, carefully following the instructions given by the advertiser. I make sure the post is the length the advertiser has requested, and that I’ve included the requisite number of links to their site. It’s important to write a factual, truthful post about the services being offered, based on the information you’ve been provided: “This is the most respected real estate agency in Miami Beach. You can search their site for condos and houses, rentals and purchases. You get access to the Miami Beach MLS listings,” etc.)

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AdSense placements tips for blogs: how ONE CHANGE can increase your blog’s AdSense revenue

adsense placement tips free blogging I only got my FIRST Google AdSense check after I’d been blogging for nine whole years.

How embarrassing. Why did it take so long?

Because I wasn’t following Google’s own tips for AdSense placement.

After I made ONE change to the Google AdSense placement on my blog, my revenues shot up tenfold.

I was sick of visiting my Google AdSense account and seeing my daily revenue stuck at pathetic levels, like 10 cents or 20 cents a day.

All I had to do, as it turns out, was visit Google’s own AdSense blog, where they share tips and best practices.

Sure enough, the blog talked about a certain website that had been sticking a 468×60 Banner AdSense unit at the bottom of their pages, and wasn’t making much money.

But then the website started experimenting with 300 x 250 Medium Rectangles instead.

When they started putting the 300 x 250 Medium Rectangles right in their actual posts, their revenue went from $10 a day to $1700!

So I decided to change what I was doing with AdSense placement on my blog. Before, I just stuck a 728 x 90 AdSense Leaderboard unit on my blog’s sidebar and hoped for the best.

BUT as you can see from the illustration at the top of this article, Google recommends AdSense placement right below/at the bottom of your blog posts, too.

So the next time I blogged, I wrote my blog post as usual, but then pasted the AdSense code for a 300 x 250 Medium Rectangle image ad at the bottom of my own words, leaving a little space between the content of the post and the ad.

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How to make money blogging with contextual advertising (video)

Sometimes you’ll visit a blog and notice hyperlinks throughout the copy that look a bit different. They may be double underlined, or a color other than the usual blue.

Then when you’ve clicked on one of those links, you’ve been taken to an ad for a product or service. Maybe a pop up comes up first and shows you a preview to the advertiser’s site.

When you clicked on that link, the owner of the blog you found it on gets paid!

These special hyperlinks are called in text advertising or contextual advertising.

I’ve experimented with different in text and contextual advertising services in the past, but I’ve settled on InfoLinks and use it on all my blogs.

InfoLinks is free and easy to join. Once you sign up, you get a piece of HTML code you insert in your blog’s source code.

Or you can use the very handy InfoLinks plug in for WordPress if you run a WordPress blog (like this one.)

(InfoLinks also has plugins for Blogger, Joomia and Drupal blogging platforms.)

Here’s how InfoLinks describes what your visitors will see:

“Pay Per Click In Text advertising inserts text link advertisements within the content of your website, usually in the form of double-underline hyperlinks. Upon a hover of the mouse, a floating informational bubble opens with content from an advertiser. If clicked, the visitor is directed to the advertiser’s landing page and you earn advertising revenue; otherwise, when the mouse is moved away from the hyperlink, the bubble disappears.”

InfoLinks offers many advantages if you’re thinking of monetizing your blog with contextual advertising.

They “guarantee the industry’s highest revenue share.” That means you’ll keep a bigger chunk of what you’ll earn after installing InfoLinks than you will if you go with another similar company.

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Affiliate marketing strategy: earn from Google AdSense

Are you a webmaster who needs funds to keep your website running?  Or is your website the only way for you to earn income?

Whichever you are, for as long as you are a webmaster or a web publisher and you need cash, affiliate marketing may work well for you.

With affiliate marketing, you may get cash pouring into your bank account easily.  And if your website is rich in great content and you want to earn more profit, why not get into the Google Adsense program as well?

Google Adsense is actually an affiliate marketing program in a sense.  In Google Adsense, Google act as the intermediary between the affiliates and the merchants. The merchant, or the advertiser, simply signs up with Google and provides the latter with text ads pertaining to their products.  These ads, which is actually a link to the advertiser’s website, would then appear on Google searches as well as on the websites owned by the affiliates, or by those webmasters who have signed up with the Google Adsense program.

While one can find a lot of similarities between Google Adsense and other affiliate marketing programs, you can also see a lot of differences.  In Google Adsense, all the webmaster has to do is place a code on his website and Google takes care of the rest.  The ads that Google places on your site will generally be relevant to the content of your site, based on the keywords on the page or post.  This would be advantageous both for you and for the advertiser, as the visitors of your site would more or less be actually interested with the products being advertised.

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Affiliate marketing strategy: AdSense and affiliate marketing

A lot of people are lured by affiliate marketing because it can be financially rewarding. You don’t need products to sell, you just have to market them in your own web site. You also don’t have to process customer payments and the shipment of the products.

Of course, you want earn huge amount of commission.  Keep in mind, however, that affiliate marketing cannot guarantee you instant success if you don’t work on it. There are a lot of ways of maximizing your income.

The easiest way for you to increase your revenue potential is by incorporating Google AdSense into your blog or website. What is Google AdSense? What are its advantages? How can it boost my revenues?

Merchants place their ads in Google, through the AdWords program. When these ads show up on the Google results page, or on your, they’re called AdSense. Google AdSense lets you display these ads in you website and when your visitors click through them, you earn.

What’s great about the Google AdSense is that the ads are relevant to the content of your web page. Most likely, visitors of your web site are interested on the theme of your site and specifically, on the content of your web page. So, seeing ads related to their interest would definitely drive them to click through the link or the ad.

Using state-of-the-art technology, Google scans your web site and matches the content of your pages to their large database of advertisers; this way, Google is able to find ads that are targeted by the users of your site.

In addition, Google changes the ads in your site as you change the content of your pages, so you can always expect the ads to be relevant to your site.

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Affiliate marketing strategy: a review of LinkShare affiliate network

LinkShare_125x125ButtonV1Online affiliate marketing is one of the most effective, cheapest and fastest ways to promote merchandise. With millions of people going on the Internet everyday, almost any merchant can introduce his products and services to a wider market, thereby, maximizing his revenue.

Likewise, affiliate marketing is an excellent way to generate income. For someone getting sick of the grueling ten-hour/day work routine, affiliate marketing is a chance to earn money without that daily grind. (Not that you should quit your day job before you can build up your affiliate marketing strategy to replace it!)

In affiliate marketing, both parties benefit since as the merchant earns from each item sold, and the marketer earns a commission.

If you are interested in affiliate marketing but are finding it hard to look for affiliate programs, affiliates or merchants, you can start by checking our various affiliate networks. Many affiliate programs in the Internet are being offered through an affiliate program network, which acts as a link between the merchants and individual affiliate marketers with websites that accept advertising.

Among the most popular is LinkShare.  LinkShare maintains and manages affiliate marketing programs for over 6000 merchants with various kinds of businesses, products and services. It profits from the set-up fees, monthly account maintenance fees and commissions.

Joining affiliate networks like LinkShare can help establish your online marketing business. Whether you are a merchant or an affiliate marketer, you need to  research your partners in order to choose the best for you. LinkShare only chooses legitimate businesses to work with and promote.

LinkShare lets you access a large network of advertisers and merchants who offer their affiliate programs to website publishers (a.k.a., affiliates) who are willing to promote their products. In the same manner, it gives the merchants access to a large network of affiliates who are searching for affiliate marketing opportunities.

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