Peace

SAFE LISTS

There is nothing safe about a “safe list” - more importantly, they suck.  A safe list basically is where everyone is “opted-in” to receive e-mails and you can share your biz-ops.  Sounds like it might work?  Not a chance.  I see all these people that claim they make money from safe lists - I don’t believe it.  Even if it is true, there are people who make money by shoveling manure - doesn’t mean I want to do it.  I mean, who reads the e-mails anyway?

So why am I so fervently against SAFE LISTS?  

• 1. They don’t work.
• 2. I already get enough spam? Don’t you?  Check out the account I opened just for a little safe list experiment (3 safelists, June 27, 2008-December 22, 2008)

154 spam? It's all spam!

• 3. I don’t really have a 3rd reason - isn’t 29,221 (plus 154 spam???) e-mails in just under 6 months reason enough for you???

If you expected an indepth review of safelists - sorry - some things just don’t need that much ’splainin.  

My final thought on the subject - if you join a safelist after reading this post…well…uh…

This campaign is coinciding with my new diet which you can see over at LosinFat.com  You see I need to do something to keep my mind off of the food thing so I thought this would be a perfect time to start this test.

I will explain the methodology after the study is complete.  I am going to give you a couple baseline stats for my blog and we will see what happens by the end of the study - January 4th, 2009.

Yahoo! Site Explorer

Xinu Stat Checker

If any of you would like to share ways you have utilized to increase traffic or any case studies on your own blog that you have done, please share it with the class.  I am not going to veer of my original plan, but I am always open to suggestions on ways to improve the effectiveness of my commenting.

What?

Anyway, I am sure that this isn’t the end.  YouTube certainly will go back to the drawing board to come up with a similar feature that just “seem” so intrusive.  I think I will wait at least a day before I post something on that just to make sure that they are going to keep it around for more than a few hours.

Oh well…..

Update

Looks like the fix is to have the search bar drop down when you scroll over the player - much better.

Which do you prefer?:

Which looks better to you?

So I did a little search to find out if anyone else disliked this little “upgrade,” and I found quite a few.  The people over at TechCrunch were kind enough to post a link to the Google site to explain the mods you need to do to get rid of it.  

Pretty easy actually, you just need to add &showsearch=0 to the end of the video ID in SWF URL of the embed code (what???).  If you don’t know what that looks like, I am going to give you an example below of the embed code for the video Pride by Syntax which I have posted on my sidebar.

The original embed code looks like this:

<object width=”425″ height=”344″><param name=”movie” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/BvuU3×9TpZM&hl=en&fs=1″></param><param name=”allowFullScreen” value=”true”></param><param name=”allowscriptaccess” value=”always”></param><embed src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/BvuU3×9TpZM&hl=en&fs=1″ type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowscriptaccess=”always” allowfullscreen=”true” width=”425″ height=”344″></embed></object>

…and the new code looks like this:

<object width=”425″ height=”344″><param name=”movie” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/BvuU3×9TpZM&hl=en&fs=1&showsearch=0“></param>
<param name=”allowFullScreen” value=”true”></param><param name=”allowscriptaccess” value=”always”></param><embed src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/BvuU3×9TpZM&hl=en&fs=1&showsearch=0” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowscriptaccess=”always” allowfullscreen=”true” width=”425″ height=”344″></embed></object>

It is really easy considering I am no techie…but thank you to those that are that made this an easy fix.

I was browsing some blogs I frequent and I came across a poll on the best blog analytics software over at TopRankBlog.com.  I took part in the poll and wasn’t a bit surprised about the results that the analytics tool most overwhelmingly voted for was Google Analytics - 68% of the 188 votes (at time of this post).  Google recently integrated their analytics with AdWords making a nice one-stop-stat-checking-shop (yes, I am a poet in my spare time), and it is an extremely robust analytics tool.  So is it my favorite tool? No.

You see I use Google Analytics, and it is good for a quick snapshot (even though the feature set is actually huge), but I find that it is inaccurate when compared against the other tools I have tested - so I supplement it with a tool called Stat Counter.  I am not going to do an in-depth review as I already did a Stat Counter review over at worldomarketing.com.  I just find it a much more quicker to use tool than Google Analytics, and it is free for a log size up to 500 entries.  I know, not much if you have a lot of traffic, but if you are just starting out, it is really a great way to measure efforts.  By the way, you can pay to increase the size of your log (I think there is a joke in there somewhere).

So what do I mean by measuring efforts?   If you are new to online marketing, you may be under the illusion that all you have to do is put up a blog or website and the traffic will roll in.  Not so unless you hit the Internet lottery (don’t know what that is, but you must of hit it if you get traffic for no effort). 

Anyway, you will be undergoing different tactics to get traffic to your site.  Will they all work?  Probably not, but you can be assured that of those that do work, some will work better than others.  How can you tell?

Having an analytic tool like Stat Counter will help you to target your efforts on traffic gaining tactics that do work and not wasting time on those that don’t.

You want an example don’t you?  Okay, here is one:

You finally sign up for a Twitter account (an follow me of course), and start tweeting (your little 140 character max posts on Twitter).  After following proper Twitter etiquette of not having every tweet a blatant attempt to sell your product (trust me, don’t do this), and having a fair number of “contributing” tweets, you decide to write a tweet about your latest blog post.  You can then track and see if there is a change in your baseline (average number of daily visitors).  Hopefully there is.  But how do you know they are due to Twitter?  Well, the tools in Stat Counter tell you where your visitors come from - pretty cool, huh?  But that is just basic. 

Trust me, sign up for your free account and try it out.  I know you are thinking that I am just trying to get some affiliate money off of you by pushing this service - WRONG!  As far as I know, they don’t have an affiliate program.  I am pushing this product because I like it, and it is useful.

For more useful information about analytics, go check out the post on best blog analytics software that inspired me to write this entry.

Anyhoo, I am pimping an e-book - that’s right - I want you to get this e-book.  It is an incredible 134 page resource that will show you how you can make money blogging.  I am not making a landing page or anything to promote it, I am not giving you some freebies if you get it through my link…you need to get it just because I said so!

This book isn’t even brand new - been around a couple of months….but you need to get your copy now if you haven’t already.  This book has made me take a step back from my bloggging and re-evaluate how I am going about things.  This e-book is the real deal - not theory.

So what is this incredible e-book going to run you?  For a limited time only, you can get your copy for $197, $97, $47….nope, if you act now, you can get this amazing book for:

FREE

That’s right - free.  I have recently bought a few e-books about how to make money blogging just to see if I missed anything in the basics - all three of those e-books sucked compared to this free one.  Just get it, read it, and apply it.  I will be appying a few things that I have learned over the next couple months.

I am making money from this blog, but it is not what I consider a lot of money.  I am looking to take it to the next progression and have this thing turn out more money for me.  I know a few of the tips I picked up are going to help me to it to a whole other level.

Now download it!!!!

Want to be the first to be on my list for my new e-book coming in January?  Sign up for my newsletter:

This is not going to be an all-encompassing list of ways to monetize your blog - just the basics.  You will find as your blog grows that you may have different needs.  You may be even reaching a different audience than you had originally anticipated and your advertising will evolve to complement your blog.  That being the case, I am just going to cover a few basic ways for you to monetize your blog. 

There seems to be some out there that shun monetizing their blogs.  Some people say that it is a turn-off and people won’t visit your site.  Based upon my observations, this is totally false.   Most of the successful blogs out there are ripe with ads and many of those people make a nice chunk of change from their advertising efforts.  Are there extremely successful blogs out there that aren’t monetized?  Sure, but they are far and few between.   I would say that even those sites are monetized as it is one big ad for the author and what he or she promotes.

So let us presume that you don’t have any moral quibbles with monetizing your site.  What is the best way to do it?   I don’t know - but below are four good places to start advertising on your blog.

Sidenote:  When choosing your ads (whatever form you decide to utilize), you need to think like a reader of your blog.  How did they arrive at your blog?  What interests drew them to your blog?  What parallel interests would people like these have?  This is where you want to direct your advertising efforts.  I know you are saying “Thank you Captain Obvious,” but you’d be surprised how many people don’t even get this straight-forward concept.

Google

Let’s start with one of the most common forms of monetization - Google’s AdSense.  Google allows you to place a script on your blog to display ads that were placed via Google AdWords by advertisers seeking a specific audience.  Well, how are you going to know what to tell Google to put on your blog - sounds daunting doesn’t it?  Lucky for you, if you want to use Google’s AdSense, it is contextual - meaning that the Google’s script analyzes the content of where AdSense is being place and displays ads that are relevant to that content.  Easy squeezy lemon peasy!  Oh, so you want me to give you a tutorial on AdSense - ain’t happening - just go to Google AdSense, and they got the best tutorials you could ask for.

Display Ads

Next, are display ads, or more commonly called banner ads.  These are the squares, rectangles,  or whatever other shape they will come up with next that are basically billboard ads on your blog.  Some are unobtrusive while others are really annoying - you are going to have to decided your comfort level with ad size.  You will notice that a very common size now are the 125×125 ads which refers to the ad size length by width in pixels.  Why are they popular?  Probably because they fit well in multiples on the sidebar or at the top of a blog while being large enough to convey a message with flare (they got pictures so they are pretty) - see my side bar for an example.  The next most popular are the rectangular banner ads which come in a couple of different sizes.   These usually go at the top of a site or are included within or at the bottom of a post. 

Alright, where do you get these?  Almost all affiliate programs that you will want to promote will have banner ads available.  The easiest way to join affiliate programs is through an affiliate network.  What dat?  An affiliate network  basically brings advertisers and publishers (you as the blog owner are the publisher) and provides what amounts to a middle-man for publishers to come to a single source to find advertisers.  There are several really good affiliate networks out there you can work with, but let me just give you two to start with.  The first is Commission Junction - the largest in the industry is a great place to start.  They have hundreds of advertisers with dozens of different styles of ads from banners to text.  In addition, their Commission Junction University is a great place for you to get an in-depth introduction to the world of affiliate marketing. 

The next one I want to recommend is :

There you go, a prime example of a 125×125 banner ad being used contextually within content.  But why do I like them?  As the ad says, they have great payouts but they also have excellent customer service. 

Please be aware that you may apply to either of the services and be denied because they may not feel that you have enough blog-credibility in their opinion.  If that happens, don’t fret.  Use the ads available through direct affiliate channels, and keep plugging away.  After you have some posts under your belt, apply again.

Text Links

When people think of text links, they often think of buying links which may or may not be a wise decision for you (just do a search for “text links” for more information).  When I speak of text links, I am referring linking directly to the text of your posts. 

This is something that you can and should do when the opportunity arises as it will definitely add to your bottom line.  A straight forward example of this is in this sample portion of a post:

While there are many places to find a domain, I find that GoDaddy offers me the best range of solutions for…..

What I have done there is put a very unobtrusive affiliate link to GoDaddy so that if anyone follows that link and purchases something from GoDaddy before the cookie expires, then I get an affiliate commission.  To most people this doesn’t look like advertising either, it simply looks like a link to the website being referenced. 

Selling Products or Services

This should be the first thing anyone thinks about when wanting to have a business - selling products or services.  However, many of us don’t have a product or service to offer, or at least we don’t think we do.  If you have great content, you can organize it, package it and sell it.  This is what you see with most ebook offers - simply of collection of knowledge on a subject laid out in an easy to read and easy to follow manner (hopefully anyway).

Perhaps you have a connection to buy and resell certain items that you think there is a great market for and is related to your blog - this would be a great venue to offer up those products, even if it is just an adjunct to  your current eBay efforts.  It could pay off big for you and may lead to other distribution opportunities - especially if your blog showcases you as an authority in that particular product field.

Of course if you have expertise in a certain area, you can and should offer up you r knowledge for a fee as a consultant.  Many companies have grown out of someone offering their expertise and parlaying it into a much larger, more lucrative venture.  If you are confident of your expertise, utilize it and get paid for it.

Wrapping It Up

There are many more ways to monetize your site that I haven’t covered such as Chitika, Yahoo Publisher Network, Linkworth, Direct Media Exchange…the list can go on and on.  I think the few advertising avenues that I covered are the best places to start.  After you have explored these ideas and are comfortable with advertising on your blog, you can start exploring other avenues.

One thing I can tell you though, is that you don’t want to try every kind of advertising that there is all at once - your site WILL look gaudy and that WILL turn some people off.  Be selective, keep track of performance, and adjust as needed.

Off you go.

(click on image for better view) 

While many people new to internet marketing may have not yet treaded the PPC market, there is a good chance you soon will.  This video briefly explains the use of negative keyword campaigns and how they can boost your PPC returns.  There is a short article accompanying this video over at WebProNews.