Tuesday, December 16, 2008

5 tips on how to make money from business blogs

Blogs, that are emerging as an integral part of many business websites, were earlier not taken more than tools to sing praises of company products and services. But if employed smartly, blogs can also bring in some money.

GIVING A business virtual presence with a website has been in vogue for sometime now and considered one of the must-have elements for growth. But the trend of adding a blog to a business website has also emerged at the same time and is steadily gaining popularity amongst entrepreneurs. Smart Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) are using their blogs to declare their market strategies. They have made it their mouthpiece to interact with their clients and promote their product line and do much more. Interacting with clients and customers is surely a money-puller method. And it is the most common and palpable reason behind having blogs. A little twist and you can evolve ways to use blogs or web-logs as money spinners.

Although, interacting with customers and declaring your market plans are also part of making money via business blogs, but the virtual pitch cannot be raised without other measures that we are going to talk about. Let your blog do its due on the virtual pitch with these tips. In a nutshell, use your business blog to bring in a little cash too. The following few steps can turn your blog into a cash mint.

  1. Selling advertising space on your blog.You can monetise from your blog by selling advertising space. This is one of the commonest ways of utilising a blog to generate income. Things become more simple when you have got already a well-known blog or the one that is a well-received unique source.

But if you are a new into enterprise blogging and have a lesser-known blog, it would be better to use services like Google’s AdSense or BlogAds. These services lend bloggers support to establish ad programmes.

AdSense — which allows you to choose several ads that match the content of your blog — pays you under pay-per-click programme. It examines as to how many readers clicked on the ads placed on your blog for further information.

  1. Helping sell others’ products.You can use your blog to help sell others’ products by selecting upon affiliate programmes available on the web. This can be a good click-through opportunity that promises scope for more bucks. Affiliate programme is the ideal way to make your web-log profitable and is an affiliate marketing initiative. Affiliate marketing is a kind of online programme used by a website for driving traffic to another. In return the website which has used it for other one gets paid. There are number of web affiliate programmes available on the web. You can select programmes that suit you and your blog. These programmes enable your blog to serve as a channel between readers and online sites offering multiple goods and services. One popular choice can be Amazon.com.

Some other affiliate programmes include Google’s Cost Per Action, ClickAffiliate.com, Games Warehouse Affliate, BidVertiser, eBrandz, eAffiliatez and QuickBooker, among others.

  1. Soliciting contributions.Helping sell others’ products or taking shelter under affiliate programme does really play a crucial role when online money is concerned. But hawking goods and services does not alone work on the blog. For blog-related income opportunities, you have to use the strength of your loyal readers. You have to rely on their kindness and can simply ask them for contributions. Suppose, for example, your business blog supports a cause or comes out for an issue in fashion—we mean if your blog keeps on raising voice on tax reforms, a fashion trend, a political controversy, health care or topics like that—you can ask your readers for their support. Even though you’ve earned loyal followers who like reading what you have to say, they may like to underwrite their loyalty with a little financial help.

You can easily establish an on-site contribution collection button with programmes like PayPal to solicit their contributions.

  1. Use your blog to market your services. It is an acknowledged fact that blogs have become soapbox on the Internet where you can shout your opinions or do a little more than that. But besides your opinions, it can turn out to be a great tool to market your services. You may write blogs about the kind of services you offer, tell your readers the benefits of your services and hence leave an impression on them about your product/service line.

But while blogging what you have to keep in mind is that you are never cryptic about whatever you say either about your services or about your marketing strategies. Explain everything at length that demonstrates your strategies, abilities and perspectives on particular product or market issues. When your customers will read it, they will come to know at length about your services and will have least doubts. It will help you win more customers. And more customers mean more business. And more business means more money.

  1. Blog to build a rapport with your existing customers.Never distance from your customers, or business will distance from you.


    Seems like an old adage, doesn’t it? But it can simply be applied in the case of business blog. When you have got a blog, try regularly to communicate with existing or new clients using a blog post. Take every opportunity that your blog lends you to come closer with them. Inform them about whatever your business does, what are the upcoming plans with regard to services, and how your business can serve them better, etc. In simple words, if you will show proximity to your customers, they will show proximity to your business. It will help you tap new customers as well.
These are simple steps for which you need not have hardcore technical expertise to handle. You can bring them is use and add more to your treasury. After all drawing out money from every possible source is what a business is generally aimed at. Moreover, it will enhance traffic on your website, helping your business become popular.


Saturday, December 13, 2008

How To Build Traffic To Your Blog

Setting up a blog is easy but maintaining and promoting it in search engines needs specialized skills. You need to understand how blog functions and in what ways it can be promoted successfully to generate instant and constant stream of traffic.

Whenever you update or add posts to your blog, you can ping to let services (designed specifically for connecting blogs.) know your blog content have changed since last update. This is like telling others that you have changed. It is seen that pinging increases traffic to your blog.

With Wordpress, checking for updates in your blog is done automatically and the changes are reflected usually by moving you blog links on top of bloggers blogroll list. This way you get more clicks to your blog.

If you want to increase more traffic to your blog, you can install additional pinging services. Its seen that pinging frequently increase traffic to your blog. Most of the blogging software comes with at leas one ping updates which pings every time you add a new post; but if you want to ping even if you edit your post to update it, you need to install additional plug-ins.

Wordpress bloggers can add additional update ping services by simply login to there account and adding more update services in their list present at the bottom of the sub-sub menu Writing tab under Option menu. A long list if services to be added can be found here at http://elliottback.com/wp/archives/2004/11/21/a-list-of-rpc-and-rpc2-to-ping/ .

Besides pinging services, you will also need to submit your Rss feeds to various directories and search engines to increase traffic to your blog. One advanced tip (often missed) while making your Rss feeds is to carefully select keywords which are high on traffic but low in competition and use them in the text of the feeds. Also update your feeds more often to increase your chance of being found in the SERPs.

Nothing else can beat the power of adding keyword rich contents to your blog frequently. This has the major impact in attracting quality traffic to your website as more and more posts from your blog find their way into the search results. Usually it is seen that blogging frequency is most when you have newly installed your blog and after 2-3 months of blogging the frequency of blogging tends to decrease. So, it is the continual efforts that will get your blog the much-deserved traffic.

Happy Blogging!!

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

How To Make Extra Money Without A Website


One of the great things about the Internet is how it has made it so much easier for the average person to make extra money.

No longer do you have to wait weeks for your money to come in from a mail order business. Nor do you have to surrender your precious blood, sweat and tears running a backbreaking service business. It’s a fact; you can actually sit in front of your computer and make extra money. You can even make extra money without a website and this article will explain how.

No doubt, if you’ve done any research on how to make extra money, then you’ve heard the words ‘affiliate marketing.’ Affiliate marketing typically involves having a website that has links to relevant affiliate programs, allowing you to make a little money from the traffic that is already visiting your site.

Or, affiliate marketing involves using pay per click ads to drive traffic to the affiliate program page. Although this method doesn’t require you to have a website, it’s generally not a good method for a beginner to get involved in, because it can get expensive in a hurry.

Luckily for us though, there is a way to make extra money without a website and it’s a method that is simple to implement. The only scary part is that does involve a little work. If you’re not willing to put in the effort, then this may not be for you.

You’ll want to find an affiliate program you’re comfortable with. Probably one you have a little knowledge of the subject matter. Once you’ve picked your program, you need to do your keyword research. There are plenty of free tools available for this step.

You’ll be looking for overlooked keywords that don’t have a lot of competition. They need to have some traffic on the search engines, but the competition should be lower. Once you have your likely keywords picked out, you will write articles, using the keywords in the titles and in the article body. You will link to the affiliate program from the article and also from your author resource box.

Most article directories allow you to have four links- two in the article and two in your author resource. Try to use relevant linking text, text that the search engines will gleefully gobble up.

By writing interesting articles and posting them to high traffic article directories, you will create a steady stream of traffic to your favorite affiliate programs and you’ll soon be unlocking the code to how to make money without a website.