Blogs – Make Money Out Of Thin Air

Filed Under (Blogging, Content, Make Money With Your Blog) by Jon Hook on 28-07-2008

Often most people around us don’t understand why there is such huge fuss about this thing called Blogs. In fact most of who have even heard of blogs don’t realize its full potential. Blogs are great money making machines and even you can make a lot of money by blogging. Don’t believe me? Well you’ll believe what I am going to tell you here below.

A blog is just like a website but with a few limitations. There is a limit on the size of the material you can upload, there are fewer fancy things that you can do to your blog etc. But all this is simply immaterial. A blog is basically something where you can showcase your talent, discuss an issue with people or just express yourself.

You must have seen advertisements on various websites and also on the various sites like msn.com, yahoo.com and just about every popular site. But why? I know it might sound foolish to a few when I ask why, but it is very important to understand why somebody chose to promote his or her product through a website. It is not just because they want to promote their product but also because the website through which they are promoting their product has a huge visitor base and a good name amongst netizens.

All these websites are no longer sticking to the pay per click advertising model but have adopted a fixed fee model. So if you are popular in your community, professional or social circle, even you can start blogging and make money through advertising.

But don’t start dreaming of a million dollar mansion right now. There’s much more left to do. A blog is popular only as long as you keep it alive and abuzz with activity. You need to keep updating the content every now and then, answer the questions that people put forward, participate in debates and/or start new ones. You must be able to deliver some value to the reader who takes time to visit your blog and make sure that they return back to keep your blog making money for you.

Most of the advertisers will be reluctant initially because they want to be sure if you really have a loyal visitor base. But over a period of time if you can manage to keep your visitor base strong and loyal, you’ll win over the confidence of the advertisers and then you can directly get in touch with them and ask them to advertise on your site for a weekly or a monthly fee. But it does not mean that you cannot make money in the meantime.

While your blog is still in the nascent stage you can get in touch with Google Adsense and ask them place ads on your blog. These ads will bring income on pay per click (ppc) basis. So whenever somebody will click on the advertisement on your blog Google will get some money for it. In turn because the revenue has come through your blog and efforts Google will pay you a part of it.

One thing that you must always take care of while blogging is that you must know your subject well because just one wrong or misinformed comment can often be all that it’ll take to shoo away all your readers and followers. Also make sure that your readers can always freely ask you questions about the subject that you are blogging about. And when you are trying to find advertisers for your blog the best ones would be those who will derive some value out of it. So if you are talking about some topic related to pest prevention at home, a pest control company would most easily pay you for advertisement.

Blogging To Increase Sales

Filed Under (Make Money With Your Blog) by Jon Hook on 22-07-2008

Blogs – The Most Important Tool to Send your Sales Spiraling high

Well for some of us blogging is just about passing time and writing something on a webpage that is of interest to us. Most of us use blogs as a tool for self expression, to make new friends or discuss any issue. But is this all that blogging is about? Well there’s much more that a blog can do for you. A blog can help to increase your sales and improve your relationship with your clients tremendously, which ultimately again leads to massive increase in sales and profits.

So how does it help in improving your brand value, sales, product quality and client-company relationship? Well we’ll share it with you here. Blogs are great marketing tools and when used effectively can attract a lot of potential customers.

Imagine you are running a small fashion house and you have developed some new designs that you are not sure whether people are going to like them or not. What do you do? You’ll go and show them to some of your closest friends but not many people for the fear of word spreading out that you have produced such and such designs. But with blogs there’s a way out. You can put snaps of some of those designs on a blog and then invite people from different walks of life to check them out and give feedbacks on the designs. Such people can be easily found at the various fashion and clothing related online forums. You don’t even have to reveal your name or company’s name till you feel comfortable. This is one of the best ways to get the most genuine feedbacks about your products.

Blogs also offer a great way to improve your product quality. A certain Swiss lock-maker found that their sales were on a constant decline despite increasing demand and was desperate to know what was wrong with his latest designs. The lock-maker started a blog where he informed people about the high quality of metal used and the latest technology that he was using in manufacturing the locks. People accepted everything but everyone on the blog left a feedback which shocked the lock-maker and brought to light real cause of plummeting sales, the key to the lock. The key being supplied with the new locks way too small for comfort and often got bent after a few months of regular use. The company immediately changed the key specs and all the faulty locks and ensured that its reputation was kept intact.

Blogs are a great way to also improve relationship with your clients and also to make sure that they remain loyal to your brand. Blogs are a great way to also tell people what all they can do with your product. Several small software firms do that because often people don’t realize what all functionalities that they offer with their products. A lot of mobile phone companies blog to inform people about what all their mobile phones can do and what all features people are looking forward to.

Most of the products that are designed in today’s world are designed based on client requirement or based on what a group of people in the society need. So it is imperative to know what they want if you want your company to make handsome profits.

Blogs can also be used for advertising too and therefore you can earn money or promote some other business of yours or a relative’s or a friend’s through your own blog. Blogging has truly come a long way since its inception and has become more than just a bare necessity for individuals and business.

Affiliate Marketing for starters – Give Yourself a Head Start

Filed Under (Make Money With Your Blog) by Jon Hook on 20-07-2008

Affiliate marketing is a form of marketing where you promote someone else’s product on your blog or website. So, all that you are doing here is that you are informing the potential customers of a company, about its products or services and then guiding them to the company’s website. And every time somebody from your blog reaches the company’s website, you get paid a percentage of the sale amount or an amount based on pay per click basis.

But how lucrative is this affiliate marketing work? How do I decide what product or company to market on my blog? What do I say?  How do I promote a product?

Affiliate marketing is a very lucrative business because it requires almost no capital and starts giving returns much sooner than any other conventional business. The commissions that you can earn through Affiliate Marketers like ClickBank, Commission Junction, Paydotcom, etc can range anywhere between 5% and 75% of the sale value of the product. 75% sound too good to be true, doesn’t it? Well yes, it does and there are several products on which you’ll be paid so generously. Why? We’ll show you here why.

Imagine an eBook worth $200 is being sold online by somebody called Tom. Tom makes 5 sales each week which means that he makes $1000 each week selling his eBooks through his website. But what would happen if his eBook was being promoted by 50 blogs and each blog made a sale of one eBook every week. He would then be selling out eBooks worth $10,000. And even if he pays out commission of 75%, he is left with $2500 which is more than double of what he earned earlier. But of course, if you affiliate with a physical goods company it’ll pay you lesser commission like 15-20%.

So what all can you sell to make money? You can sell just about anything that can be sold and billed online like eBooks, Software, electronic goods, books etc. Basically all that you have to have is good writing skills and passion to promote the product with all conviction. Quite often you’ll find that there are products which people want to buy every week or month. You get a monthly commission for that too.

So how do you decide what product to choose? Well, look around and see what niche of products give the best commissions for every sale. The highest paying ones are probably the least selling ones and might prove difficult to sell. Those giving away the least are probably the ones that are there on hundreds of other blogs and therefore your chances of making a sale is low again due to heavy competition. So pick a product that you know a little bit about and offer commission in the range of 25-50%. These are either new products or those with medium conversion rates. But at the same time these would be on fewer blogs which would mean less competition.

Affiliate marketing is the call of the day and anyone who is missing this flight is definitely going to repent later. So go ahead and get your own blog today and sign-up with an affiliate network to start making money right away.

How to impliment affiliate marketing into your blog

Filed Under (Make Money With Your Blog) by Jon Hook on 17-07-2008

Affiliate marketing is one of those terms that you must have read and come across more often than not. Newspapers and magazines feature interviews of people who made their millions on internet and mostly through affiliate marketing. Some of you or people you know must have also tried their hands on affiliate marketing but did not get the results that the ‘internet millionaires’ got.

Well, the point that I am trying to make here is that there’s no denial to the fact that people have made millions from affiliate marketing, but you have to understand that they have done the right things at the right time. There are hundreds of affiliate marketing programs out there that promise a lot but deliver little in terms of value. You must understand a few things about affiliate marketing before you jump into it.

Affiliate marketing is not something that’ll make you rich overnight. You will have to treat it like your company, the only difference being that you don’t have to store anything or ship anything to make profits. So what is it that you have to do? Well, you have to promote a product that someone else wants to sell and you’ll get a commission based on every sale that gets executed due to your efforts. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Well it’s not so.

Internet is like an ocean and your blog like a fish. So unless you make sure that you have certain qualities that set you apart from others you can you’ll have difficult time making money through affiliate marketing and surviving. So what are these qualities? Well, firstly you should be able to identify which products you can effectively promote or take the help of a professional or company that’ll guide you through this jungle.

But why would somebody pay you for affiliate marketing? Well they will be ready to pay you because they are far more busy producing the goods for sale that they cannot manage marketing themselves. Apart from that search engine rules keep changing every now and then and stale content keeps getting pushed behind every day in the search results. So as an affiliate marketer you ensure that you keep the content updated and keep the matter from getting stale. And above all the seller has to pay you no upfront fee for marketing.

Affiliate marketing works on the basis of pay per click or pay per impression. So if you want to strike it big in the affiliate marketing world, the best way to start is by taking help from the professionals. So if you want to blog about something tie up with Google AdSense where they will place ads on your website relevant to the content that is there on your blog. So you will have to select some of the topics that you either know inside out or something that is really hot and selling like - affiliate marketing.

Another form of affiliate marketing could be tying up with companies like ClickBank and then directly marketing the particular product that ClickBank recommends. These are all online stuff like eBooks, software, manuals etc. basically everything that can be transferred instantly online. And every time that somebody buys the product through your website you get a commission on the sale amount which varies from product to product.

The basic difference between the two types is that if you tie up with ClickBank you know what you are promoting whereas the case with Google AdSense is a little different because you just supply content relevant to a niche and Google decides what ads are shown.

Advertising on your Blogs – A few things that you should know

Filed Under (Make Money With Your Blog) by Jon Hook on 14-07-2008

Blogging is the latest craze all over the internet universe. I call it a ‘universe’ because there seem to be endless opportunities in this virtual world for just about everybody. It’s like the American dream. If you have a genuine idea and you are willing to work hard, then nobody can stop you from becoming rich and famous, no matter what age, what religion or what nationality you belong to. But how have blogs helped so many people make so much money in such a short time? Well, you’ll have to read and find out.

While blogs were initially started as just a place where somebody could express their feelings about something or just as a webspace to write something down, very soon people realized that a blog was more than just a scribbling pad or a personal diary. Blogs can be said to have been rediscovered as a great marketing tool and then there was a sudden explosion in the number of blogs and the things that people were doing with them.

People started using blogs to market their products. Companies started using blogs as a place where they could get their consumer’s feedbacks. In fact companies like Ford Motor Company, Honda etc. even asked people to give suggestions as to what they would want to get changed in an existing model and what they would like to be different in an upcoming model. Thus blogs suddenly became so famous that hundreds of people could be found discussing at the same time and making it a really lively place.

But where there’s such a crowd, there’s also an opportunity for generating revenue out of advertising. This is where the monetary benefit of running a blog comes into play. If you run a popular blog, one where you have a loyal visitor base and where people have a lot of fun and get some value for the time they spend, then you too can make a lot of money. You want to know how?

A popular blog is like a popular website where you can always make a lot of money through advertising. There are various methods by which you can make money out of advertising.

  1. Sell your advertising space to an advertising company for a fixed amount (this is particularly favorite amongst the more famous and active blogs). This way you get your money every month or in lump sum for a fixed period of time. You don’t have to worry about the advertising anymore.
  2. The second method which is the most widely used is tying up with companies like Google Adsense which place ads on your blog and pay you on Pay Per Click basis. So every time somebody who visits your blog and clicks on any of the ads placed by Google AdSense, you get a small commission. The more the visitors, the more the clicks. The more the clicks, the more the money that you make.
  3. The third way and the least practiced is by finding advertisers on your own and placing their banners and ads on your blog. While in this way you don’t have to share your advertising revenue with anyone, you’ll have to do all the running around. This is preferable only if you have some solid contacts and a long term contract for advertising.

One of the things that you must always ensure while seeking advertisers is relevance. If you are blogging about health and fitness, then an ideal advertiser on your blog would a company that manufactures or sells health products or fitness equipments.

And to ensure maximum number of visitors, keep your content absolutely to the point while using appropriate keywords to help the search engine locate your blog.

Also if you have decided to find sponsors for your blog on your own it would be wise to not put too many ads for two reasons. The first one is that too many ads may distract and irritate the visitor and keep him or her from coming back. Also if your blog is popular and the advertising space is less, you can charge your sponsors more.

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