One of the most difficult decisions a new blogger must face is when to start monetizing their blog. Several opinions exist on this topic with all arguments raising valid points. Some abhor the monetization of blogs. At the other end of the spectrum, some start blogs only for the hope of money. So, as a new blogger, what route is best to take? Let's take a look at the pros and cons of a few options so you will be better informed when faced with this decision.
No monetization
The idea of blogs and the evolution (or revolution) of the internet in recent years has led to more free sharing of information. In a way, bloggers have allowed the online community to take back the internet from huge corporations that would prefer to charge for every work or informational bit found in cyberspace. However, as blogs have become increasingly more popular and prevalent, the shift in information sharing has started to move back in the direction of monetization rather than freely sharing without thought of monetary gain. In the purist's eyes, a blog with ads is an abomination.
Early monetization
As stated before, many bloggers have read the stories and promises of wealth and started to blog simply for the money. These blogs are new (less than 3 months old) and already show lots of ads. The problem is that the content suffers or is nonexistent. The ads clutter the page and look unsightly. Most visitors click the back button very quickly on these sites. A problem arises, however, when the content is good but the ads and layout are so poor that visitors again leave quickly.
Early monetization can be added on a small scale without being obtrusive. A single block of text link advertising such as AdSense can be placed above the fold and still be attractive.
Late monetization
This method refers to waiting and allowing a blog to grow before placing ads on the site. Many experts agree that this is the best way to make money from a blog. This category typically includes blogs that are three months or older and have at least 30 posts. A downside to this monetization technique involves your prospective community having become accustomed to an ad free blog. When the ads appear, some regular readers will be upset and leave. Most will understand and all will be well.
Deciding if and when to monetize a blog can seem like a daunting task. It is important to note that a blogger cannot please every visitor every day. However, with a little planning and good ad placement and layout, there is money to be made from blogging especially if you are passionate about your topic - but that's another article altogether.
Thomas Smith is a blogger and the owner of two successful blogs - Online Income Project and Generating Inexpensive Website and Blog Traffic. He lives on a small ranch in Idaho with his family.
Subscribing to the famous and reliable directories like Yahoo, DMOZ, LookSmart and so on, is something any Webmaster can do to achieve links of repute. The trick lies in looking beyond what is easily available and linking with winners who do not really know you yet. Your website must reflect substance and that is what you must work at to begin with, literally speaking.
Stylish and/ or out of the box graphics are not imperative to success. Nice and pleasing ones will do. Emphasize on factual, authentic, informative and articulate content optimized to give maximum but meaningful and useful web pages. All web pages must be well connected to the each other and in each case to the home page – the site should be highly navigable and menus well organized. In gist, visitors to your website should be able to travel across your website quite intuitively and find it useful – that is left impressed by the website in short!
Once your website is optimized in itself to please the visitor, it is time to find the “winners” who can be linked with without harming the business. Relevancy is the keyword while linking. But of course, not everybody related to your business is worth linking with. Sporting an outbound link from your competitor website, though related, will filter your visitors onto him, thereby draining all your efforts to vain. So, the strategy is to approach relevant but non-competing webmasters – the tip is to search Google etc. for regionally filtered vertically-related websites, preferably with added text “add link” or “submit link” or “suggest link”.
Once you have the list of sites of interest, it’s for you to decide which ones deserve your proposal for link exchange. Shortlist 10-15 sites at a time and look for respective suggest link form. If not found, send a concise link request email. On similar lines, you can also publish a suggest link form at your website, though it may bear fruits only once you gather a good track record.
After the request, it is time to slow down and await response patiently. Upon a decent interval of days, you may start sending a new batch of requests to another fifteen links of relevance. Keeping the sites to be approached numbered thus, clears you out of the ’suspicious websites’ bracket from the point of view of the search engine, as otherwise links in hordes may attach to you in a rather short span of time. There is no reason to be discouraged by a rather lukewarm response to your requests. It only indicates need of improvements in the content of your request email.
Apart from seeking, it is important to use bait for link-exchange. In simpler words, circulate compelling well-written articles, blogs and press releases across web containing a link to your website. As these link-baits will be extensively read or discussed on the web, your website will develop advantageous one-way links automatically. To be emphasized is good content and intelligent use of keywords within the articles and blog entries for desired results.
If you own a website for your business, attracting website traffic and more importantly sustaining it will be one of your top priorities if you want to succeed in your home business. Needless to say, there are many ways to increase website traffic. You do need to find the best strategies of learning how to tap this traffic, hopefully a growing one at that, perhaps self-replicating stream and preferably free.
This article provides some ideas to increase online traffic.
(1) Search Engine Optimization
It would benefit your business to ensure that your website is search engine friendly as this will certainly help grow your website traffic. Ensure all the meta and alt tags are completed and there is a H1 header, optimizing the text for your chosen keywords. There are a number of sites which provide a "spider simulation" which shows you what your site looks like to a spider and what you can do to improve its search engine ranking. A report on the quality of your website is generated for your view and to take necessary steps for improvements.
(2) Directories
Directories are website listings and there are many to choose from. A good method to choose a reputable one would be to look for directories that have a good traffic rating, one that receives significant high volumes of website traffic (use Alexa). A few good examples to start this would be Yahoo and DMOZ.
(3) Traffic Exchanges
Every website you view in a traffic exchange generates credits which are exchanged for views of your own site. Most Traffic Exchanges are free to join and they generate traffic for you almost instantly. There are basically two types of exchanges, manual surf and auto surf. The manual surf exchanges are preferred as they require the person to view and click the sites. The more sites you view the more people visit your website and the more your website traffic grows. To increase web traffic even further, join a few of them so as to generate more visitors, which can help in your page ranking too.
(4) Article Writing
One of the most time consuming but effective methods of increasing search engine traffic. Most of these article directories offer this service free. Ensure that your article is optimized for keywords and that you include your website url bio line at the bottom of the article before you submit. Ezines, Magazines, Business Blogs, and webmasters are always on the lookout for good content to include in their articles as they are also in the quest for better search engine rankings. This method is very effective in getting one-way back links to your site.
(5) Blogs
There are more than 10 blog platforms to choose from. High on this list are word press and blogspot. Ensure your blog is located on your site, and check that it links to your key pages and that you ping each time your blog is updated. Search engines favor sites with frequently changing, unique content so you will need to provide regular updates to your blog. A regularly updated blog will attract readers which in turn builds and increases website traffic.
(6) Forum Marketing
Join a few good forums so that you can leave your URL in them. This will increase traffic in two ways. Firstly, people who read your posts are likely to click the link to checkout your site. Secondly search engines will generally accept the link which adds up to your link popularity. Another benefit of joining these forums is also to learn from other experienced and successful marketers. You'll be surprised at their willingness to share their knowledge with you.
(7) Viral Advertising
If you have an idea and you tell 10 people and they each tell 10 people and so on, by the time the idea goes through 10 levels it has been passed on to a million people.
You can use this similar principle as your business marketing strategy too. If you produced a free report or ebook filled with links back to your site and gave it away, the chances are those you gave it away to would do the same thing. Your links would then multiply significantly over the Internet giving a viral effect and your website traffic will grow.
(8) Reciprocal Links
They are also called link exchange and link swapping. Webmasters hope that people will click on their link in other websites thereby generating website traffic. However, be selective in who you do reciprocal links with. Always ensure that your link partner is relevant to your business niche and preferably has good Page Ranking. This strategy is one of the very best ways of generating free, targeted website traffic. It also is highly rated by search engines
(9) Classified Ads
Before the web came along, if you wanted to advertise you would turn to the newspaper "classified" section. Classified ads didn't die with the web, they just went online. One of the most popular classified sites is Craigslist.com. This can be a powerful tool for getting search engines to notice your site and send you traffic.
(10) PPC Marketing
PPC stands for "Pay Per Click" and is one good way to increase traffic into the website you are promoting. Google's Adwords program is one of the most successful PPC engines. You buy ads from Google by writing an ad and bidding on keywords to determine how much you will pay when someone clicks your ad. This is a powerful tool to advertise your product or webpage to millions of people who access the Internet at very low bid.
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