Everywhere I turn nowadays I hear more and more people talking about learning how to make money online, in particular, how to make money with blogs. Although the number of people using blogs to make money has skyrocketed over the past few years, the vast majority of them are failing miserably. If you’re one of them, here’s a way to make money with blogs in 7 easy steps:

1) Pick a niche market you are very much interested in, and is a “buyers” market, and start posting Search Engine Optimized (SEO) content to your blog that solves a problem for your reader in that market. Think of this blog as a “Theme” blog, with all that you do centered around this one theme. This helps you to focus and not get distracted by the “latest & greatest” money-making gadget or online opportunity.

2) Write SEO content articles about your topic and submit them to article directories, with a link back to your blog in your resource box. Be very mindful to follow the rules as outlined by the blog directories you are submitting articles to. No link baiting, flagrant promotion or hyper-links within the body of the articles. I personally use ezinearticles.com, goarticles.com and articlealley.com for my article submissions.

3) Pick one (1) quality forum that is related to your niche market and actively participate in that forum, both asking and answering questions. Again, no link baiting or flagrant promotion, etc. Focus on adding value to the conversation and what you can give versus just what you can take. You want to build your reputation as the “go to” person in your market and not the “run from” person

4) Place affiliate ads using anchor text links on your blog, paying close attention to the words in your anchor text. Be sure that they include the same keywords that you use in your blog posts, your article submissions and your forum posts. For example:

<a href=“http://yourdomain.com”>How To Save 50% Or More On Camera Supplies!</a> would create a link at your blog that looks like this:

How To Save 50% Or More On Camera Supplies! (with “camera supplies” being the obvious keyword here.)

With the right market, the right words and the right offer, you increase your chances of making a sale when they click-through.

5) Add a link to your newsletter at your blog, being sure that the name of your newsletter is closely related to your niche. For example: Jim’s Camera and Photography Tips: “How To Save Money While Taking More Photos!” – Whatever name you choose be sure that it reflects what you offer your readers, and that your message is congruent with your blog posts, the articles you submit to directories, as well as your forum posts.

6) Email your opt-in newsletter subscribers a weekly tip that is useful and solves a problem related to their needs. Also, once a month send a special offer with a link to your product or affiliate product. Don’t overdo it here and try to take advantage of your list by sending them a weekly offer, once a month is fine for a responsive list. Remember, your list is there for you to serve and not vice-versa.

7) Be consistent. Nothing works unless you work at it consistently. Even if it was the greatest, easiest and most incredible money-making business ever created, it will not work unless you work it consistently. Consistency, or the lack of, is the number 1 factor in all business failures. The same is true when  using blogs to make money.

Using blogs to make money doesn’t have to be difficult. In fact, it can be much easier once you establish the steps you need to take to make money with a blog, then be consistent in your efforts. Consistency, more than anything else you do online, is what will determine your success or failure at making money.

I hope you’ve received something of value from this post! As always, your comments and feedback let us know if we’re helping you make money with your online business.

Until next time,

Blessings to you and yours!

James

Not only is blogging profitable, blogging can be a great source of fun and networking with other people!  In order to assist you in your blogging efforts, here are several blogging strategies to help you become a better blogger…Starting Now!

• Be Informative

You don’t want to just create the impression that you are knowledgeable about a specific niche or product, you want to BE knowledgeable! Therefore, you must stay current on what’s going on in your area of expertise.

If you are endorsing a product or voicing an opinion, be sure to check your facts, first!  Nothing spells out “Player!” faster than if you are offering an opinion, and it is obvious to the informed reader that you may not know what you are talking about.  And believe me, they will know! Don’t be a player, be a doer!

• Stick To A Schedule

Bloggers want, and demand, consistency from their online sources. Therefore, stick to a regularly scheduled time-frame each day to update your blog. Listen, successful blogging requires consistent effort.  Therefore, you don’t want to “lite a spark” then be unable to pour gas on it when it gets going.  Look, blogs and RSS feeds are popping up on the web like popcorn at the movie theater, and you don’t want to get left behind by not being consistent with your message!

• Don’t Be A Stray Cat

The content of your blog should be related to the message of your blog.  Stay on topic, don’t be like a stray cat wandering the neighborhood. Unless you have an incredible amount of relatability, and the majority of us do not, then most of your blogs readers will be interested only in the content that relates specifically to their particular area of interest.

Define your topic, stay on topic and lead your reader to their appointed destination. Which is? Where they want to go, and not where you think they may want to go or even where you think they should go. Do this, and you will create a loyal following of hungry readers!

• Keyword Optimized Blog Posts

If your goal is to increase your blogs visibility, then it is imperative that you include keywords in the title of the blog, and within your blog posts! First, the title or headline is meant to attract interest; give your reader a reason to read. Each time you post, you must have a title that will attract attention and, remain relevant to the post. Also, the title should be no longer than 8-10 words (Better Blogging Strategies, only 3!)

• News Flash: What Happened Last Week!

Let me ask you: Does that title just want to make you keep coming back for more?  Uh, No!  If you could care less what happened last week, then what makes you think your readers will want to?  The fact is, they don’t and won’t! Although posting to your blog each day can get old, even for those of us who enjoy blogging, it is more important that your posts are current and accurate. Writing a post or article about something that happened 2 months, or even 2 weeks, ago will not be of much interest to anyone.

• KISS (Keep It Simple and Short)

Keep your blog posts short, simple and easy to understand. Remember this, the Internet is a global tapestry full of various cultures; and slang, ‘street-talk’ and BS doesn’t always translate well into what you want to say. Sometimes, you may actually have to explain yourself to your reader, or at the very least, take into consideration that you are posting to a global audience. Just remember, the majority of bloggers online won’t take time to do this, which puts you head & shoulders (Not the shampoo) above the rest!

• Check It Again, and Again…

Listen, nothing will crush your credibility quicker than misspelled words, poor grammar and broken sentences. For instance, the other day I was reading a blog post where the writer referred to themselves as a “Published Arthor” and not Author.  How do you think I felt about reading this post any further? The fact is, I didn’t read any further!  Listen, it takes only a few seconds or minutes to spell check and proof-read your post, and the credibility it will give you is worth it!

• Really Simple Syndication/Rich Site Summary (RSS)

RSS, or Really Simple Syndication/Rich Site Summary, will help increase your blogs audience tremendously! RSS is a format for delivering regularly changing content on your blog. RSS allows you to easily stay informed by retrieving the latest content from the sites you are interested in, saving you time by not needing to visit each site individually. You ensure your privacy as well, by not needing to join each site’s email newsletter.It is critically important to your blogs reach that you include your blogs content in an RSS feed.

• Size Matters!

In order for you to attract the attention of the search engines, you must develop content, and Lots of it!  The old adage “Content Is King!” could never be truer when it comes to successful blogging. A headline, followed by a few sentences of sub-par content, will not generate the interest of readers (traffic) or help with search engine ranking. Also, archive your old blog posts to develop a large reserve of related content for your readers.

• Enough is Enough

If you update your blog content regularly as we discussed previously, the search engines will “spider” (crawl, index) your web pages at regular intervals. Many times, web log audiences are small, but with regularly scheduled updates your audience will grow. Some blogs may have no more than several hundred readers; however, the people who do begin to return regularly, are probably interested in what you are saying.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this post, be sure to check back often for more updates. As always, we appreciate your feedback, comments and questions.

Until next time,

Godspeed

James
~+~

One of the best ways to make more money, even with limited marketing funds, is to create a blog. Blogs are relatively simple to set up, and even easier to use!

One of the secrets to successful blogging, is to create quality content and post it frequently to your blog. By posting quality content frequently to your blog, you allow your reader to learn more about you, your product, and your business. More importantly, however, your blog content should grab your reader’s attention and make them not only want to keep reading now, but also keep them coming back for more!

Another secret to successful blogging, is to “ping” your blog every time you update your blog content. Pinging is a way for you to inform the search engines and blog directories of new content posted on your blog. This is important to your blogs success because the search engines love new content! And with increased search engine traffic comes better search results, If you do update your blog on a regular basis.

However, pinging too much can be too much of a good thing! The search engines and blog directories really frown on over-pinging, especially if you ping trivial updates to your blog.

Blog content is not limited to just blog posts, either! Blog content can also include

• Podcast
• Videos
• Photographs, and
• Basically anything that adds quality and provides value to your reader!

A good idea to keep in mind is that it is the quality of your text, the words, that counts! This is especially important if you are promoting an online opportunity, home-based business program or other ‘opportunity’ related program or service.

Your ultimate goal for your blog is to become, what is commonly referred to as, an “Authority Site.” The term Authority Site implies that you are an authority in your niche, or market, have an established readership. The underlying strategy of becoming an authority site, is in creating numerous back-links to your blog posts, or should I say Blog Traffic!

Again, you do this by providing unique content that distinguishes you and your blog from the 500 Gazillion other blogs online! In other words, you are establishing yourself as THE source to turn to for information on the product you’re selling, and as the expert in your market.

Again, it’s important always to remember that “Content is King“. And if you want your content to be found by the search engines (readers), you must use keywords in all your posts! However, they need to be spread throughout the post so as not to appear overladen. The search engines, nor your readers, will like your posts if every other word is “Blog”, “Web Traffic”, “Make money” etc; etc…

Remember, the keys to successful blogging is:

• Stay Active
• Update your site regularly
• Provide only quality content to your reader
• Optimize your blog with keyword rich posts, and
• Ping your blog after each new post!

And lastly, personalize your blog! Take every stride to ensure that your blog is a reflection of you. Stand out from the rest of the crowd in your own unique way, and Be Yourself! Speak to your readers in your own voice, using your own opinions and personal experiences.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this post, be sure to check back often for more updates. As always, we appreciate your feedback, comments and questions.

Until next time,

Godspeed

James
~+~

In today’s post, we discuss tips for bloggers that cover writing and optimizing for search engines.  Getting this combination correct can result in highly beneficial results for any and every blogger!

Tip #1: Write the best possible content each time you post, even if you post every day!

“Post to your blog often” is the first piece of advice most all bloggers see when learning to blog. The reason this advice is so popular, is due to the fact that it is based on the assumption that posting often demonstrates that you are committed to what you do.  The logic in this is simple, posting often results in visitors and readers coming back to your blog to see and read about what you’re up to (maybe even buy something- wink).

However, posting too often could have the opposite effect!

When visiting a blog for the second time, many readers might be looking for the same post to re-read or something similar.  However, forcing your readers to go through a several new posts, 1, 2, or sometimes even 3 a day, could be a definite “turn-off” for most readers.  The end result? Your reader will just use a search engine to find what they’re looking for (click, and goodbye reader).

Furthermore, posting 2, 3 or more times in a day usually leads to inferior content due to writers fatigue, and therefore less interesting. So instead of posting several times a day, simply post once a day or just whenever you think you have something interesting or useful to write about.

Put some thought into your posts, give your readers a reason to come back and always avoid bombarding them with clutter. Focus your effort on a few good topics. Remember, quality over quantity wins hands-down every time when blog posting.

Tip #2: Optimize your Blog for Search Engines

Most often, many bloggers start blogging the wrong way. Usually when a blogger starts blogging, they do so by relying primarily on social networks for traffic. Social network traffic is great but it rarely converts into money. The best traffic to make money is Search Engine Traffic.

A blogging tip every blogger should read and re-read is this…

Search engine traffic will be the most profitable kind. And although Social networking is an easy way to generate traffic, you should often always spend time to ensure your blog and posts are properly optimized to rank well in search engine result pages. Take a few hours a week and perform a few scheduled and simple search engine optimization tasks.

Tip #3: Blogging SEO In your blog

Make sure your titles are relevant to your topic, make sure you refer to your topic keywords throughout your posts, and make sure you tag your posts properly. Also make sure to interlink your posts with older relevant posts.  Always use keywords you are interested in ranking high for and keep these keywords concentrated around a specific topic.

Tip #4: Links from other sites

Get as many one way inbound links with anchor text as you can; by many I mean Thousands!

Think of your site or your blog as a property you acquired in a rural area. Once you begin building on this property, you’ll need to make a road, get it hooked up with power and so on, right? Creating backlinks is much like the road to your property, and is critical to your blog or sites ability to prosper.

Don’t rely only on other bloggers to link to you. Create backlinks to your blog by submitting articles in databases. Write a few 400-500 word articles on similar topics you write about in your blog, add back links with anchor text and start submitting. Ideally, you should submit a few articles to thousands of directories for every post you write. Software is available to help you do this, and be sure to do the same thing for each post.

You can easily create thousands of one way links to your blog and particular posts in less than a few hours. Social bookmarking also works great for this purpose. Make sure you get your posts bookmarked at as many bookmarking sites as possible.

Also, once a week or once every two weeks, use Google Webmaster Tools and see which posts of yours showed up in search engine result pages. Go back to them and optimize them. Add more keywords, make the title catchier, tag them better or even elaborate on certain things you wrote and think will help them rank better in searches.

These are just a few tips to help you on your way to becoming a top-notch blogger! I hope you’ve gotten something from them, and will put them to use…Now!

I hope you’ve enjoyed this post, be sure to check back often for more updates. As always, we appreciate your feedback, comments and questions.

Until next time,

Godspeed

James
~+~

How are you using your blog to make money right now? Chances are you’re doing what 90% of everyone else online is doing, and that is simply having a blog where you post great content and then periodically promote affiliate products or CPA offers, right? After all, that’s the most commonly ‘prescribed’ method to make money blogging.

While this does work, to a degree, there are more advanced methods that could be way more effective. One such method is: Leverage.

Even if you have no clue whatsoever of how to leverage, you will find that you can use your blog as part of a plan that uses it to perfection. In fact, the only thing you need (apart from your blog, obviously) is an eBook product of your own. Without your own product you’ll find that you can carry out this plan in different ways – but it won’t be as effective.

So let’s say you have an eBook, okay.  Now, if you were you to just go about marketing the ‘normal’ way via your blog, you’d probably dedicate a post or two to it, and maybe even set up a sales page, etc. However, you’re not going to do that this time.  Instead, you’re going to take that eBook and extract a chapter that you feel is particularly interesting, and make it into a 10 page report or so (which obviously means your ebook has to be more than 10 pages to start, right? Duh…)

Now you have two products: An eBook, and a report! From this report, you can then create blog posts that talk about various topics that are covered in the report itself.  Try to aim for around 5 or so. Each of these blog posts should be aimed at eventually leading the reader to the report itself, which you’re going to be giving away for FREE when your readers sign up to your list.

This is the power of using leverage to make money blogging!

Basically, this means that when people read your blog posts, they’ll have the option of finding out more by simply signing up to your list and downloading the report for free. In the report, there should also be an option to find out even more by purchasing your eBook!

See how you’re now using a linear plan for marketing?

Truth be told, you could branch things out even further and create various other blog posts from your eBook itself to promote both the report and the eBook. By not promoting the eBook directly though, you’re going to be simply ‘providing value’ to your readers, and it is far less likely to come off as simply trying to palm products off onto them.

At the same time, you’ll be building your list and starting to be able to market more and more products as and when you come up with them.

Using this strategy, you should be able to pull in far more profits from your blog simply by maximizing the effectiveness of your marketing. That in itself will set you apart from the minnows of the marketing world, and let you swim with the big fish!

If you’re tired of barely scrapping by, and are ready to finally make money online with blogging, you need to check this out…Now!

Using Leverage To Make Money Blogging

I hope you’ve enjoyed this post, be sure to check back often for more updates. As always, we appreciate your feedback, comments and questions.

Until next time,

Godspeed

James
~+~

PS: When I first started blogging a number of years ago, I would have crawled across broken glass to get my hands on this material! It’s this good. Don’t waste anymore time and effort trying to make money blogging the hard way. Grab this now: Using Leverage To Make Money Blogging