When you blog for money you need to create your own content (and lots of it!), implement advertisement programs like Google AdSense and WidgetBucks, and last but not least – you need traffic.
In our offline lives we dread it, but online we embrace it. I want to give you 5 ways to start driving traffic to your blog today. With a little time and patience, you will slowly start to increase your viewer ship.
(In no particular order)
5.) Post comments on other blogs.
Blogs are everywhere – there’s certainly not a shortage of them. You should have no problem finding other bloggers in your niche that are popular and interesting. Bookmark those that you like, follow their topics daily, and if you find something that sparks your interest – comment.
Become a participating voice in the community. The more interesting your comments are, the more likely your peers will follow you to your blog. And who knows – you might stand out among the crowd and be recognized by the author, which can spin off into better opportunities.
4.) Register with blog networks like: Technorati, BlogCatalog, and MyBlogLog
It’s important that you get your blog out there for others to see. You can start the process by submitting to search engines, but that’s just the beginning. Technorati, BlogCatalog, and MyBlogLog are just a few of the high profile blog networks on the web. Register with them, network with other people in your releated area, and get your word out.
When you register with these services remember a couple of things:
1.) Create a detailed profile. Let people know a little bit about you and draw them in. Without that personal interaction people may flee quickly.
2.) Tag your blog properly. Tags are very important – they’re usually one or two word descriptions of your blog. So for example my blog would fall under categories like: Money, Business, and Finance. Dig around the specific service and look for popular tags and try to use those for your blog. It allows people who are interested in these topics to easily find your site.
3.) Register with several forums.
Do a Google search for forums that are related to your niche and register. Try to be an active voice in the community. People will flock to you if you’re interesting. Not only that but it allows you to find out what others are doing and what makes them appealing.
When you register with a forum, make sure to fill out the profile, similar to the blogging services. And equally as important – make a signature that is a direct link to your blog. Your signature is shown in every post that you make – helping you gain visibility. This is all the more reason to create thought provoking discussions.
2.) Social Bookmarking and Article Submission.
Social networking, bookmarking, and article submissions are all the rage today – don’t let it pass you by. Some of the major networks include delicious, Furl, and of course, Digg. These sites will allow you to tag, bookmark, and submit articles that you think are interesting. What’s more interesting than your own work? People should know about it so go spread the word.
1.) StumbleUpon
StumbleUpon really falls into tip #2, but I decided to break it away from the pack because it provides quicker results. Like the rest of the social networking sites, you create a profile and network with others. But what makes StumbleUpon so darn unique, is that you can “stumble” thousands of sites that you’re interested in by the click of a button. So what does that mean for you? Well, you can stumble your own site. By doing this you get into the Stumble rotation, and any people that you network with can stumble across it as well.
In my experience StumbleUpon can bring great surges of traffic for short periods of time. Due to the nature of the service, you’re likely to get overlooked more than not; however, those that do stop – tend to stay. And if they like the site, they can rate it and review it for all the friends in their network to see. Are you getting the picture here? Your viewer ship has the potential to explode!
As with most things in life, there’s no silver bullet for getting traffic. It takes a lot of research, careful planning, networking, patience, and time. If you have what it takes and start using my recommendations, you will definitely start to see an increase. Hopefully that increase in traffic will help you blog for money
The plugin is able to access usability of the website, as well as what areas of the website are visited. The users that visit your site will be able to provide you with a great deal of feedback about your site, thus allowing you to tweak areas of the site that might need some improvement. This gives you some idea of what this plugin does.
The next thing that is important to know about this plugin is how it actually works. The plugin allows you to install a script with the website. This script will allow you to access the userreport benefits and features.
Once it is installed, when a user visits your website, they will be presented with an online survey. The survey will ask questions that are related to how they used the site, how well they liked the site and questions about where they live, their gender and their age.
As the owner of the website, you can then access various reports that provide the results and that are made available to you through your own account.
Let’s take a closer look at what this plugin will provide. It will allow you to create your own surveys. These surveys can consist of the questions that you have come up with as well as use the colors that you select and you can use your own logo in the survey.
One of the greatest ways that we can improve our website is by listening to our users. This plugin lets you listen to your visitors through the feedback forum. As you read the feedback, you can share your ideas, and discuss ideas that either your visitors have or ideas that you have. You can customize this forum with the colors of your choice.
With the use of a social click map, a heat map and geographic map as well as the implementation of Google Analytics, you will be able to get all of the demographic information that you need to find out detailed information about your visitors.
As we stated earlier, you will be able to find out such things as the age of your visitor, whether they are male or female and even what type of education that they have received. You are provided with a wide assortment of reports that will allow you to use a PDF format along with the possibility of even using PowerPoint.
However you also can compare your visitors. By this we mean that you can see how visitors of different ages react to your website from seeing how long they stay on a page to such things as the what the different age groups of visitors think about your pages to how well the different ages convert.
This kind of information will allow you to have a better view of the customers that you need to target or that you want to target.
Are you interested in creating a newsletter to send to your visitors? You can get a list of who to send that newsletter to by using the online survey. This survey allows you to ask the questions that will get you the answers that you want to find out about your website.
Step by Step How It Works
Let’s take a look at what happens when you install this on your website. Once you open the website, you will see a popup displayed. As you can see, the visitor is invited to be a part of a short market research survey. You’ll see that it is a short survey and the visitor is given the purpose of the survey.
Wrap Up
At the end of the survey, the user has the ability to take part in a free monthly prize drawing. If the user would like to take part in the drawing, then the user must enter their email address. That ends the survey and the website owner is then able to look at various reports.
Most bloggers complain about not making any money after investing a
few months of efforts into their blogging.
They blog for months and months without significant income as proof of what they are doing, it turns to years before they know what is happening and they later decide to give up and then conclude that blogging just doesn’t work.
The question is why is it always like this? Why can’t bloggers get substantial results after putting in a lot of effort? You’ll be surprised by the answer; you might even be doing it! The reason is why many new bloggers, the reason is…
The “Make Money Blogging Cycle”
This particular cycle is the problem and it is what most new bloggers who want to “make money blogging” go through.
The cycle goes like this:
Blogger starts a blog > He comments on a few blogs to gain little momentum > He displays a few ads > He makes a few cents > He tweaks the ads to increase income etc.
This cycle is just so flawed it’s the reason behind the failure of many new bloggers. Of course, it might work for big blogs with hundreds of thousands of monthly visitors but you can be rest assured it won’t work for your blog.
After all, how much is an ad really worth on a blog with only a few thousand visitors? The reality is, no matter the niche, it probably isn’t worth so much.
The NEW Way to Make Money Blogging, Quick
Okay, to be honest, this “way” isn’t entirely new. It has been in existence before I knew what blogging was but my reason for classifying it as new is because a lot of bloggers are unaware of its existence and they keep on struggling with making money from ads.
This “way” is to start offering your services to your audience.
One thing we bloggers do is writing. We write a lot of content every day and gradually we’re able to understand our audience and what they want. The problem is that we don’t know how to get our audience to pay.
Instead of struggling to display a few ads your readers won’t bother to click why not turn your blog into a real business and start making money the old way? Why not start offering your services and use your blog as a lead generator?
This was what I did 8 months after blogging. I was only a blogger at first but I soon began to offer my services as a freelancer using my blog as a lead engine. Just 8 months after blogging I had my first $1,000+ month and my income from offering my services has increased ever since.
You will notice from the above paragraph that I started making four-figures 8 months after starting my blog and I’ll be using this article to explain how you, too, can start making money by offering your services.
1. What Makes Your Blog Different?
The first thing we’ll be examining is the question of what makes your blog different from every other blog that talk about the same thing as you. Is it really different or it is just like every other blog online? If it is different, what makes it so?
The number one mistake most bloggers who plan to offer their services as a freelancer make is that of not differentiating themselves. They just keep giving generic tips and wonder why no one is patronizing them.
This step is crucial and something you must look into. What makes your blog different? What is your USP? Once you’ve come up with a list of what makes your blog different the next step is to create your USP (Unique Selling Proposition) and then look for a way to build it into your brand. With the right USP, once anyone comes across your blog they will be able to see right away that it is different and they will spend a few more minutes to find out what you talk about.
In case you don’t see the importance in this, a USP is very important because people will only hire experts to work for them. No one will hire a jack of all trades to help them get things done. When you need to service your car you don’t go to the electrician that knows a few things about car, you go to the car mechanic who specializes in fixing cars. Your main aim should be to position yourself as someone who can help your audience “fix” their problems.
2. What Service do You Have to Offer?
And no, it isn’t blogging because way too much people can offer the same service. What service can you offer that relates to your USP? For example, if your blog and USP is on helping people get quality design on low budget why not start offering people a custom-made design without them having to go into debt? If you help students learn to improve their writing, why not start offering your services as a freelance writer?
You need a unique service that can be tied to your blog and USP before taking any other step. You don’t have to rush into this and your service mustn’t just be because you want to make money, you need to have something unique you want to contribute to those who make use of your services. You should know that this is your brand and online identity so you should put enough time and effort into it.
3. Look for a Few Top Experts You Can Offer Your Services to for Free, or at a Discount
If you’re a freelance writer this means you should be ready to offer a free guest post to top blogs in your niche as a way to build your portfolio and direct potential clients to your site. If you’re a designer this means you should be ready to create your best work for a bigger website/blog for free or at a huge discount so as to be able to drive their audience to your blog and make them use their service.
Now, I know that this isn’t convenient but that’s why everyone isn’t doing it. Success, online and offline, takes real hardwork and sacrifice and you shouldn’t be ready to go anywhere without putting in any effort.
You need to be able to showcase your service, and not just on a dormant website but on an active top blog in your niche. This way you’re building your brand and portfolio, you’re being everywhere and you’re creating potential for future success for your blog.
4. Use Your Blog and Every Other Opportunity to Market Your Services
Now, in every article you write make sure you mention your services. Mind you, I’m not suggesting you turn your articles into a blatant sales-pitch. Instead, give people quality information that will make them want to return to your blog over and over again; let your articles show your readers a difficult problem and then show them the solution.
Now, mention your services and anyone who needs your help and wants to save time will hire you. Of course, you can’t expect to have everyone as your client but this approach is guaranteed to bring you more success than just pitching your services to your audience every time.
You should also work on marketing your services outside your blog; this also includes inside your guest posts on other blogs, in your interviews with other bloggers and on your various social media sites. Give your services as much exposure and you increase your chances of earning more.
It’s as Simple as that…
Not complicated.
While the above actually requires a few more effort from you it is probably something you would have done if you were blogging, and you will be able to create a new stream of income for yourself while at the same time having enough to take care of your blog.
In our offline lives we dread it, but online we embrace it. I want to give you 5 ways to start driving traffic to your blog today. With a little time and patience, you will slowly start to increase your viewer ship.
(In no particular order)
5.) Post comments on other blogs.
Blogs are everywhere – there’s certainly not a shortage of them. You should have no problem finding other bloggers in your niche that are popular and interesting. Bookmark those that you like, follow their topics daily, and if you find something that sparks your interest – comment.
Become a participating voice in the community. The more interesting your comments are, the more likely your peers will follow you to your blog. And who knows – you might stand out among the crowd and be recognized by the author, which can spin off into better opportunities.
4.) Register with blog networks like: Technorati, BlogCatalog, and MyBlogLog
It’s important that you get your blog out there for others to see. You can start the process by submitting to search engines, but that’s just the beginning. Technorati, BlogCatalog, and MyBlogLog are just a few of the high profile blog networks on the web. Register with them, network with other people in your releated area, and get your word out.
When you register with these services remember a couple of things:
1.) Create a detailed profile. Let people know a little bit about you and draw them in. Without that personal interaction people may flee quickly.
2.) Tag your blog properly. Tags are very important – they’re usually one or two word descriptions of your blog. So for example my blog would fall under categories like: Money, Business, and Finance. Dig around the specific service and look for popular tags and try to use those for your blog. It allows people who are interested in these topics to easily find your site.
3.) Register with several forums.
Do a Google search for forums that are related to your niche and register. Try to be an active voice in the community. People will flock to you if you’re interesting. Not only that but it allows you to find out what others are doing and what makes them appealing.
When you register with a forum, make sure to fill out the profile, similar to the blogging services. And equally as important – make a signature that is a direct link to your blog. Your signature is shown in every post that you make – helping you gain visibility. This is all the more reason to create thought provoking discussions.
2.) Social Bookmarking and Article Submission.
Social networking, bookmarking, and article submissions are all the rage today – don’t let it pass you by. Some of the major networks include delicious, Furl, and of course, Digg. These sites will allow you to tag, bookmark, and submit articles that you think are interesting. What’s more interesting than your own work? People should know about it so go spread the word.
1.) StumbleUpon
StumbleUpon really falls into tip #2, but I decided to break it away from the pack because it provides quicker results. Like the rest of the social networking sites, you create a profile and network with others. But what makes StumbleUpon so darn unique, is that you can “stumble” thousands of sites that you’re interested in by the click of a button. So what does that mean for you? Well, you can stumble your own site. By doing this you get into the Stumble rotation, and any people that you network with can stumble across it as well.
In my experience StumbleUpon can bring great surges of traffic for short periods of time. Due to the nature of the service, you’re likely to get overlooked more than not; however, those that do stop – tend to stay. And if they like the site, they can rate it and review it for all the friends in their network to see. Are you getting the picture here? Your viewer ship has the potential to explode!
As with most things in life, there’s no silver bullet for getting traffic. It takes a lot of research, careful planning, networking, patience, and time. If you have what it takes and start using my recommendations, you will definitely start to see an increase. Hopefully that increase in traffic will help you blog for money
Improve Your Website by Getting Know Your Readers Well – UserReport
There are many people who decide that they want to build a website. They go through the process of choosing a domain name, building the website and then installing it on a server. If they don’t go through this process, they hire someone to go through the process for them.
Once the website is installed, it is time to get the traffic coming to the site. As the traffic comes in, wouldn’t it would be nice to know not only who is coming to visit the site, but also find out what like visitors like about the site?
Improve Your Website by Getting Know Your Readers with UserReport Plugin
Well, I have just the plugin for you. This plugin known as the userreport plugin, will let you get a lot of information about the users that come to visit your site. You get some personal information such as whether they are male or female, how old they, and how much they earn.The plugin is able to access usability of the website, as well as what areas of the website are visited. The users that visit your site will be able to provide you with a great deal of feedback about your site, thus allowing you to tweak areas of the site that might need some improvement. This gives you some idea of what this plugin does.
The next thing that is important to know about this plugin is how it actually works. The plugin allows you to install a script with the website. This script will allow you to access the userreport benefits and features.
Once it is installed, when a user visits your website, they will be presented with an online survey. The survey will ask questions that are related to how they used the site, how well they liked the site and questions about where they live, their gender and their age.
As the owner of the website, you can then access various reports that provide the results and that are made available to you through your own account.
Let’s take a closer look at what this plugin will provide. It will allow you to create your own surveys. These surveys can consist of the questions that you have come up with as well as use the colors that you select and you can use your own logo in the survey.
One of the greatest ways that we can improve our website is by listening to our users. This plugin lets you listen to your visitors through the feedback forum. As you read the feedback, you can share your ideas, and discuss ideas that either your visitors have or ideas that you have. You can customize this forum with the colors of your choice.
With the use of a social click map, a heat map and geographic map as well as the implementation of Google Analytics, you will be able to get all of the demographic information that you need to find out detailed information about your visitors.
As we stated earlier, you will be able to find out such things as the age of your visitor, whether they are male or female and even what type of education that they have received. You are provided with a wide assortment of reports that will allow you to use a PDF format along with the possibility of even using PowerPoint.
Integrate Google Analytics for Better Performance
We briefly mentioned that you can integrate UR with Google Analytics. You may be wondering what this can do for you as the owner of your website. With this integration, you will be able to have a better understaning of your customers. As we mentioned earlier you can get a lot of demographic information about your customer.However you also can compare your visitors. By this we mean that you can see how visitors of different ages react to your website from seeing how long they stay on a page to such things as the what the different age groups of visitors think about your pages to how well the different ages convert.
This kind of information will allow you to have a better view of the customers that you need to target or that you want to target.
Are you interested in creating a newsletter to send to your visitors? You can get a list of who to send that newsletter to by using the online survey. This survey allows you to ask the questions that will get you the answers that you want to find out about your website.
Step by Step How It Works
Let’s take a look at what happens when you install this on your website. Once you open the website, you will see a popup displayed. As you can see, the visitor is invited to be a part of a short market research survey. You’ll see that it is a short survey and the visitor is given the purpose of the survey.
Wrap Up
At the end of the survey, the user has the ability to take part in a free monthly prize drawing. If the user would like to take part in the drawing, then the user must enter their email address. That ends the survey and the website owner is then able to look at various reports.
How Bloggers Can Make Money Offering a Service
They blog for months and months without significant income as proof of what they are doing, it turns to years before they know what is happening and they later decide to give up and then conclude that blogging just doesn’t work.
The question is why is it always like this? Why can’t bloggers get substantial results after putting in a lot of effort? You’ll be surprised by the answer; you might even be doing it! The reason is why many new bloggers, the reason is…
The “Make Money Blogging Cycle”
This particular cycle is the problem and it is what most new bloggers who want to “make money blogging” go through.
The cycle goes like this:
Blogger starts a blog > He comments on a few blogs to gain little momentum > He displays a few ads > He makes a few cents > He tweaks the ads to increase income etc.
This cycle is just so flawed it’s the reason behind the failure of many new bloggers. Of course, it might work for big blogs with hundreds of thousands of monthly visitors but you can be rest assured it won’t work for your blog.
After all, how much is an ad really worth on a blog with only a few thousand visitors? The reality is, no matter the niche, it probably isn’t worth so much.
The NEW Way to Make Money Blogging, Quick
Okay, to be honest, this “way” isn’t entirely new. It has been in existence before I knew what blogging was but my reason for classifying it as new is because a lot of bloggers are unaware of its existence and they keep on struggling with making money from ads.
This “way” is to start offering your services to your audience.
One thing we bloggers do is writing. We write a lot of content every day and gradually we’re able to understand our audience and what they want. The problem is that we don’t know how to get our audience to pay.
Instead of struggling to display a few ads your readers won’t bother to click why not turn your blog into a real business and start making money the old way? Why not start offering your services and use your blog as a lead generator?
This was what I did 8 months after blogging. I was only a blogger at first but I soon began to offer my services as a freelancer using my blog as a lead engine. Just 8 months after blogging I had my first $1,000+ month and my income from offering my services has increased ever since.
You will notice from the above paragraph that I started making four-figures 8 months after starting my blog and I’ll be using this article to explain how you, too, can start making money by offering your services.
1. What Makes Your Blog Different?
The first thing we’ll be examining is the question of what makes your blog different from every other blog that talk about the same thing as you. Is it really different or it is just like every other blog online? If it is different, what makes it so?
The number one mistake most bloggers who plan to offer their services as a freelancer make is that of not differentiating themselves. They just keep giving generic tips and wonder why no one is patronizing them.
This step is crucial and something you must look into. What makes your blog different? What is your USP? Once you’ve come up with a list of what makes your blog different the next step is to create your USP (Unique Selling Proposition) and then look for a way to build it into your brand. With the right USP, once anyone comes across your blog they will be able to see right away that it is different and they will spend a few more minutes to find out what you talk about.
In case you don’t see the importance in this, a USP is very important because people will only hire experts to work for them. No one will hire a jack of all trades to help them get things done. When you need to service your car you don’t go to the electrician that knows a few things about car, you go to the car mechanic who specializes in fixing cars. Your main aim should be to position yourself as someone who can help your audience “fix” their problems.
2. What Service do You Have to Offer?
And no, it isn’t blogging because way too much people can offer the same service. What service can you offer that relates to your USP? For example, if your blog and USP is on helping people get quality design on low budget why not start offering people a custom-made design without them having to go into debt? If you help students learn to improve their writing, why not start offering your services as a freelance writer?
You need a unique service that can be tied to your blog and USP before taking any other step. You don’t have to rush into this and your service mustn’t just be because you want to make money, you need to have something unique you want to contribute to those who make use of your services. You should know that this is your brand and online identity so you should put enough time and effort into it.
3. Look for a Few Top Experts You Can Offer Your Services to for Free, or at a Discount
If you’re a freelance writer this means you should be ready to offer a free guest post to top blogs in your niche as a way to build your portfolio and direct potential clients to your site. If you’re a designer this means you should be ready to create your best work for a bigger website/blog for free or at a huge discount so as to be able to drive their audience to your blog and make them use their service.
Now, I know that this isn’t convenient but that’s why everyone isn’t doing it. Success, online and offline, takes real hardwork and sacrifice and you shouldn’t be ready to go anywhere without putting in any effort.
You need to be able to showcase your service, and not just on a dormant website but on an active top blog in your niche. This way you’re building your brand and portfolio, you’re being everywhere and you’re creating potential for future success for your blog.
4. Use Your Blog and Every Other Opportunity to Market Your Services
Now, in every article you write make sure you mention your services. Mind you, I’m not suggesting you turn your articles into a blatant sales-pitch. Instead, give people quality information that will make them want to return to your blog over and over again; let your articles show your readers a difficult problem and then show them the solution.
Now, mention your services and anyone who needs your help and wants to save time will hire you. Of course, you can’t expect to have everyone as your client but this approach is guaranteed to bring you more success than just pitching your services to your audience every time.
You should also work on marketing your services outside your blog; this also includes inside your guest posts on other blogs, in your interviews with other bloggers and on your various social media sites. Give your services as much exposure and you increase your chances of earning more.
It’s as Simple as that…
Not complicated.
While the above actually requires a few more effort from you it is probably something you would have done if you were blogging, and you will be able to create a new stream of income for yourself while at the same time having enough to take care of your blog.
