Edge of Comfort Zone:Interview With Deepak, Part 3

This is Part 3 of the Interview with Deepak (in Tamil language). Deepak is the founder blogger of bikeadvice.in and techblogger.com. The interview is interesting and provides good information on blogging, internet marketing and growing in your personal career. One statement which I liked is "where you feel uncomfortable, don't run away; it is an indicator that you are at the right place and you have the potential to grow. Don't bother with the uncomfortable feeling; continue to do what you are doing; you will be a better person in the near future".

You can watch Part 1 & Part 2 of the interview by clicking the links below:

Blogging: Interview with Deepak, Part 1
Business & Networking: Interview with Deepak, Part 2

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Business & Networking: Interview With Deepak

This is Part 2 of the interview with Deepak, another young successful blogger. In the second part of his interview to Polimer TV Channel, he shares his views on Business and Networking. If you are interested in watching the first part, you can visit Blogging: Interview With Deepak Part 1.

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Blogging: Interview with Deepak, Part 1

Just thought of sharing this video with you. Unfortunately, the video is in TAMIL language. So, please view the video if you know Tamil. This is an interview by Deepak that was telecast on Dec 24, 2009 in TV (Polimer Channel, Salem, Tamil Nadu, India). What is his interview all about? ...

Deepak is an young entrepreneur, who is in his early 20s. He rejected a well-paying full-time job to venture into internet marketing and blogging. Interestingly, he started on his own immediately after leaving the University. He shares his blogging experience in this first episode of the interview. I could not embed the youtube video; it seems it was disabled. So, I had given the link to the Youtube video.

You can view the video here: Interview with Deepak, Part 1: Introduction & Blogging

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Type of Traffic Determines Adsense Success

In my earlier post, while replying to Sandy’s comments, I told you that I don’t use Adsense in this blog. In spite of me supporting Google’s Adsense regularly in my posts, why I don’t use it here? I thought I should explain to clarify the doubts that might have cropped up in you.

I have three main reasons for not using Adsense on this blog:

(1) I primarily get traffic from social networking sites

(2) This blog deals with topics with other bloggers as the target audience. The topics generally revolve around blogging tips and make money online.

(3) The poor performing Adsense ads on this blog affected the performance of Adsense ads on my other blogs

How does type of traffic affect Adsense income?
The traffic to any blog generally falls under two major categories, traffic from social networks and traffic from search engines. Likewise, blogs can also be classified into blogs with primarily social traffic and blogs with primarily search engine traffic.

Please take note that Google Adsense does not perform well on blogs with traffic primarily from social networks. This might be one major reason why bloggers like John Chow, Darren Rowse and the likes have not been using Adsense on their blogs. Even though you get huge traffic through social networks, it is not going to convert into clicks. Even if it does, it is not going to produce good returns for you.

Blogging Niche
If you see advertisements related to blogging from Google on your Adsense block, it means you are not doing well as far as Google is concerned. So, the scenario gets worse if your blog itself is on blogging niche. It might look like you are getting targeted ads. Of course, I am blogging about blogs and I should expect ads related to blogging, right? But, Google will still pay you very minimal rates per click. So, it is a proven fact that blogging niche does not perform well with Google Adsense.

One poor performing blog affects the entire network
If you have many blogs under your Adsense account, then you need to watch the performance of each of your blogs closely. Google has a peculiar way of degrading blogs, called “Smart Pricing”. If one of your blog performs badly, then all your blogs will be slapped a kind of penalty and the returns from well performing blogs will start to dwindle. So, if you notice a blog with poor performance, immediately remove the Adsense ads from that blog. This will help in getting good returns from your other blogs. It is a good idea to regularly test all your Adsense blogs for smart pricing.

Conclusion
So, the above reasons summarize my decision not to use Adsense on this particular blog. But, I have other blogs where I still use Adsense and they perform particularly well. Hope that clarifies my support for Google Adsense and still not using it here in this blog. Please subscribe to my feed if you like this post

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Do I follow what I say?

I just wanted to address a comment from Sandy regarding the content of my earlier post titled "Keep it Simple for Adsense Success". Please read Sandy’s comment before we go further:

Sandy’s Comment on “Keep it Simple for Adsense Success”

"You don't see to practice what you preach...in that you say keep it simple and don't distract readers with subscriptions; but right in your post you say if you want more information to subscribe?

I'm not doing well with adsense, but everything I read say join join join, subscribe etc. Get your name in directories, get links out there. You post is the first I've seen that says do adsense and nothing else, so I wonder about it. Just really not sure what to make of it."

Why Sandy is frustrated?
I appreciate Sandy for being straight to the point. I can understand her frustration and I felt that her doubts should be cleared. I could have answered this as part of the comments, but I felt the answer should reach most of my readers who may have similar questions.

Why bloggers contradict?
You cannot learn the intricacies of blogging without reading other blogs or learning from the experience of established bloggers. But, the difficulty is you get contradicting suggestions/ advise from different bloggers. What should I do? One blogger tells me that Stumbleupon is the best for blog traffic. Another guy tells me that Google is the best source of traffic. Where do I stand then? Do I follow blogger A or blogger B? As it always happens in real world, you have to filter good information and weed away the bad information. Most importantly, you have to choose the right information that applies to your blogging goals.

Reply to Sandy
1. Sandy, when I said "don’t distract readers" I meant only for blogs that use Adsense ads. If you take a close look at this blog, I don’t use Adsense on this blog. So, the rules I have listed in the earlier post does not apply to this blog. If you are using Adsense on your blog, keep the distraction minimal. I do this on my blogs which use Adsense. The idea is to get the attention of the reader on the Adsense ads, rather than splitting his attention between an Entrecard ad, ten Adgitize ads, four CMF ads and a row of Project Wonderful ads. What is the probability of someone clicking on your Adsense ad?

2. Regarding joining blog directories or getting links, it is fine. The amount of incoming links from quality sites with keyword-anchored text is very important for you to move up in the search engine rankings. Getting links is certainly very important. I did not say “do nothing else”. But, while you spend time on off-site optimization you should also concentrate on your on-site optimization. Your primary goal should be to get search engine traffic.

I am just trying to share my experience with my readers and fellow bloggers. I have made mistakes and learned from them. Blogging is trial and error. If you are not going to try something, you are not going to learn. I always try many things. If it works, fine. If not, along the way, I may fine-tune my strategies.

Conclusion
Sandy, by the way, I would like to add much more on your comment. But, I have little time to add further. I will come back with further content on this in my next post. Feel free to shoot further questions that you may have.

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Keep it Simple for Adsense Success

The success of Adsense relies on the simplicity of your blog. If you want to make money with Adsense, then keep it simple. I will get down to the details below.

Bad Placement of Google Adsense
I visit lot of blogs that have too many advertisements distracting the reader's attention. I can understand their eagerness in maximizing the available space. But, Adsense is not about maximizing your advertising space. You need to use the space intelligently and place the advertisements strategically. I will show you an example which I feel is not the right way of using Adsense. (Note: This is an example and if it resembles any existing blog, it is by coincidence and not intentional.)



Look at how the 125 by 125 advertisements are distracting the attention away from Adsense ads. If you are good at probability, work out what is the probability of someone clicking on the Adsense ad.

All Adsense or No Adsense
Let me tell you something. If you are using Adsense on a blog, do not put any other advertisement on this blog. If you want to put other advertisements on your blog, then do not use Adsense. As simple as that. You may ask why. Google does not prevent us from displaying other advertisements. True. But, from my experience, you cannot make money with Adsense if you concentrate on other advertisements too. You are splitting your visitors between your different ad networks. This means that your CTR is pretty low as far as Google is concerned and it will reduce your earnings.

The problem here is getting the attention of the reader to your advertisement and getting him/ her to click. Just think about it. Do you want your reader to click on an Adsense ad that brings you $1 or even 25 cents per click or you want him to leave the site clicking on a Project Wonderful ad that fetches you 0.01$ per day?. I am not trying to compare advertising networks nor I am concluding which is more profitable for the blogger. The idea is whichever you choose to go, you should do the right thing.

Good Placement of Adsense
I will you show a good display of Adsense ads in the following example.



Look at how the 468x60 Adsense ad is neatly arranged on top of the post and a 160x600 ad runs all along the height of the post. If a reader gets bored with the content of the post, the first thing he/ she will do is to click on the Adsense ad. There is nothing distracting the reader from not doing so. The picture below shows how the ending of the post can help you.



Look how nicely a big rectangle ad is placed at the end of the post. If the reader completes reading the post and still unable to get the information he/ she wants, they are most likely to click on the ad below.

Ideal Layout for Adsense blogs
In all my Adsense blogs, I like to have a 468x60 ad at the top of the post, a 160x600 ad running along the right side of the post and a 336x280 or 300x250 ad at the bottom of the post. This type of placement has worked wonders for me. This has increased the Click Through Rate. I won't confirm that this is the best combination, you may have to try it out yourself and find the ideal combination for your blog. But, generally, this is a good combination.

Conclusion: Keep it Simple
To conclude, keep your blog as simple as possible to make money with Adsense. Minimize the number of outgoing links; do not use any other advertisements other than Adsense; do not cramp your blog with information that distracts the reader like your blog statistics or page rank or subscribe button.

Finally, will I get good earnings from the click after doing all these? I don't know. That's a completely different topic. This post has concentrated mainly on improving your click-through rate and not on your earnings. Please subscribe to my feed if you like this post

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Make Money with Today.com

Today.com is a blogging platform that makes writing and maintaining a blog easy. It pays you for blogging, without restricting you. When you sign up, you are given a VIP Blogger status that allows you to earn money based on the page impressions your blog generates. Here is my trial blog on Today.com, Cricket and India; take a look if you are interested.

Who should write for Today.com?
Today.com is suitable for bloggers who are unable to make significant money with their normal blog, be it on Blogger, Wordpress or self-hosted. Today.com pays you $2.00 per one thousand page impressions. Compare this with your Adsense earnings. If you struggle to reach $2.00 eCPM, then Today.com is worth a try. All you have to do is concentrate on your blogging and promotion of your blog. The advertisement part is taken care of by Today.com.

How to generate traffic to your blog?
I personally prefer search engine traffic. I find that Today.com blogs are generally doing well on search engines, similar to Blogger blogs. So, you have to get enough backlinks for your primary keyword and while blogging target your primary keyword and secondary keywords. Look at the picture below. This is a screenshot from my trial blog.


As you can see, I am not trying any blog promotion other than getting traffic from search engines like, Google and Yahoo. All I did is to create a blog, get some keyword-anchored backlinks and wrote content targeting my keywords. I am not getting tons of traffic, but I am having enough to keep the blog going. If you take a close look, I did get some traffic from Entrecard and Stumbleupon. But, I have removed Entrecard widget since, as I do not have enough time to drop cards. What I want is traffic without any effort, or simply to put, I want Search Engine Traffic.

Can I use Entrecard?
Of course, you can use it. But, ensure that you disable paid advertisements in your advert settings of Entrecard. So, if you are a dropaholic with 300 drops a day, then probably you could easily get thousand of unique visits to your blog. Today.com has no restriction, so far, on where the traffic comes from. You can get traffic from Entrecard, Digg, Stumbleupon or any social networks. It does not matter.

Important Points

• Spend time before deciding on your topic. It is better to have a topic that is less competitive, but have significant amount of search traffic.


• Once you decided your topic, choose your URL. Ensure that your primary keyword is included in the URL. This is very important as you cannot change your URL once you have committed.


• Post few articles and start looking for backlinks. Backlinks helps to quickly get indexed by Google.


• Keep posting regularly with your primary/ secondary keywords until search engine traffic starts to flow in.


• Now, you can slow down your posting frequency and post only when you are free. Search engines will take care of sending regular traffic to you.

How to sign up?
You can sign up by clicking here. This is an affiliate link and I thank you for signing up through me. Today.com pays $5.00 for every successful referral, if the referral goes on to post at least 30 individual posts on 30 individual days.

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How to succeed with Adsense?

How can I succeed with Google Adsense? Many of us have this question. I had been using Adsense for more than three years. During this period, I have learnt many do's and dont's of Adsense. Let me share my experience with you.

Adsense Setup and Implementation
Adsense is one of the easiest to implement. Google does not have a very strict policy on approving blogs for Adsense. So, the first step is clear. We do not need any articles on the blog. We do not need to show substantial traffic to start using Adsense. So, the setup is simple. But, how much can you make with Adsense? Is it easy to make money with Adsense? No, it is going to be a very difficult task. If you are using Adsense and expecting results immediately, you may be disappointed. So, what is the trick or secret behind blogs with successful Adsense returns?

Secret of success with Adsense
The secret is simple. "UNDERSTAND how Google Adsense works". Yes, as simple as that. If you don't understand the way Adsense works, you might not be making substantial money with Adsense.

Let me put it in a simple way. Have you played chess? Let me say, you don't know anything about the game of chess. Let me give you a chess board and the necessary coins FREE. Can you win a game straightaway? No. You need to know the rules of the game first. Secondly, you should learn the tricks to make an impact on the game. If you are playing Viswanathan Anand, Garry Kasparov or Vladimir Kramnik with no knowledge of the game, you are going to fail. The success with Adsense is similar. Google provides you a free blogging platform and an easy-to-setup advertising network. But, to succeed, you need to understand the rules and learn the tricks.

Targeted Content Means Targeted Advertisements
Enough on the importance of understanding Google Adsense. My first suggestion is to plan the content of your blog. Google automatically displays advertisements based on what you write. So, the advertisements are going to be related to what you write. The algorithm keeps fine-tuning the advertisements as your blog grows bigger and bigger. If you write about cars, then keep writing about similar content. You can target reviews of cars, news about new cars in the market, compare different brands of cars, write about Toyota, Honda or Mazda. So, Adsense will start to display ads related to cars on your blog.

This is called "Targeted ads". While you establish yourself on the topic you have chosen, you are also moving up the search engine results page and more traffic starts to flow in. These are genuine people who searches for information and comes to your page. If they find the information they want, they just move on. Or, they may click on any related ads. Let me say, I came to your page looking for a review on Honda Civic. If I see an advertisement saying "Good offer for Honda Civic", I might most likely click on this ad. The blogger will be paid a good rate for targeted audience. So, Google will be happy as you are sending a reader who is really interested in the ad.

Conclusion
So, to conclude, choose a niche and write content within that niche. Never work on topics from all around the world in one blog. If you are going to do that, then do not use Adsense. Adsense is for targeted content. Understand this and you have crossed the first obstacle.

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Want to Become another John Chow?

Let me continue the discussion on my decision to stop writing sponsored reviews. I did some justification why writing sponsored reviews is not going to help you in the long term. I wanted to clarify further on two issues, raised by fellow bloggers, on this sponsored reviews discussion.

Issue #1: Mixing of Sponsored Content and Original Content
Some of you feel that it is alright to write sponsored reviews as long as you write original posts in between. The mixing of sponsored posts and original posts is a requirement by the paid reviews companies in an effort to dissuade bloggers from completely writing paid content. But, as far as Google is concerned, the mistake is the same whether you write one sponsored post or many sponsored posts. The best practice is to keep away from paid posts.

Issue #2: John Chow Wannabes
Some of you argue that you can follow bloggers like John Chow, who continues to write for ReviewMe. He earns very good money in spite of Google’s penalty. JohnChow.com now has a page rank of only 3. If his page rank is so low, then how can he make substantial money from sponsored reviews? In fact, I understand that John Chow charges as much as $500 for a review on his blog. In his last monthly income report I read, he declared that he made $4000 from reviews made in the month of October 2008.

Let me tell you something, not every one of us can become John Chow. John Chow has as much as 45000 subscribers on his blog. So, a review by John Chow is worth for the money spent by the advertiser. Considering $500 for 45000 readers, the advertiser can reach to about 90 readers for every $1 he spends on the review.

Compare yourself with John Chow; do you have so many readers on your blog? I have just about 150 readers. Using John Chow’s standard of $1 for 90 readers, I could demand only about $2 for a review on my site. Can I do this? No, it is not worth. Neither for me nor for the advertiser. Hope you get what I mean.

Conclusion
Writing purely for money doesn’t seem to work well either for the publisher or the advertiser. The advertiser who pays you money for getting some ride on your PageRank loses when Google pulls your blog down to PR Zero. So, the advertiser is not going to get any help for ranking higher on search engine results page.

Let me conclude that I will commence sponsored reviews again when I have close to 45000 subscribers and I can demand $500 a review. And of course, the review is to reach my readers and not for ranking higher on Google results. So, all the links will be no-followed. In short, I will go for sponsored reviews again when I become another John Chow. Until then, I will maintain “No” to sponsored reviews. Please subscribe to my feed if you like this post

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Google sends me traffic again

Last month, I wrote about my intention to completely stop writing sponsored reviews. I started to slowly add the no-follow tag to all the sponsored reviews links (any way, these links will be of no use to the other party as my page rank went down to zero). I also started to remove all affiliate links to the sponsored reviews sites.

Response for my decision on Sponsored Reviews
In the meanwhile, I received mixed response for my decision to stop writing sponsored reviews. Some of you told that I made the right decision. Some of you still think that paid reviews will provide a good source of income. Even some of you suggested that I will write paid posts again after getting back the page rank.

Success of Sponsored Reviews depends on Google PR
Let me tell you, you will get the opportunities only until you have some page rank attached to your blog. Once Google finds that you are writing for sponsored reviews companies, they will penalize with a PR zero. That’s it. You will immediately see a drop in the number of opportunities available for you and a drastic cut in the offer amount per opportunity. The same guys, who wanted you before when you had a good Page Rank, start to dump you now. Why they cannot support you now? Nothing has changed in your blog. Your writing skills are the same. But, they don’t want you now just because you lost your page rank.

Sponsored Reviews Leads to Dip in Search Engine Traffic
The other side effect of Google’s penalty will show up when your search engine traffic slowly and steadily goes down to almost nothing. This is where you will start to feel the pinch (like me). The graph below shows what could happen to your blog. Look at the graph dipping down very fast.


This started to happen to this blog since end September 2008. I didn’t really notice this until recently. Once I saw this, I wanted to make it clear that I am not writing any more paid reviews. That was the reason for my outright post explaining why I said no to sponsored reviews.

Google sending Traffic Again to my blog
Once I declared my intention clearly, removed some of the affiliate links to sponsored reviews sites and no-followed those paid reviews posts, I could see slowly the search traffic coming back. I could not definitely say that Google started to send me traffic due to the above actions. But, most likely, it is true that Google recognized my efforts. My Google Page Rank still stays at zero, but at least I am getting back on to the search engine results pages. That’s good. If you don’t believe me, look at the graph below.



Contribution of Search Engine Traffic in 2008
The graph tells you the clear picture. I will breakdown how search engine traffic contributed to the overall traffic to my blog.

Jan 2008 – 36.80 %
Feb 2008 – 52.12 %
Mar 2008 – 33.84 %
Apr 2008 – 40.87 %
May 2008 – 45.65 %
Jun 2008 – 56.75 %
Jul 2008 – 56.28 %
Aug 2008 – 50.33 %
Sep 2008 – 33.24 %
Oct 2008 – 3.12 %
Nov 2008 – 1.08 %
Dec 2008 – 15.30 %

Look at how the search engine contribution dropped to single digits in the month of Oct 2008 and Nov 2008. In the first 9 months of the year, the search engines contributed about one-third to one-half of the overall traffic to the blog. The traffic went down dramatically in October and November. But, you could see a good recovery in December 2008.

Conclusion
I think I made myself clear here. But, if you still have any doubts about the impact of writing sponsored reviews, I am not going to push you further. Decide whether you want short term benefits or you want to establish a blog that brings in a steady income for a longer period. The ball is in your court. Please subscribe to my feed if you like this post

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Google Adsense vs Other Advertisements

Google Adsense is undeniably one of the highly used monetization methods for blogs. But, day in and day out, you could see articles supporting Google Adsense and articles that stand firmly against Google Adsense. What is your take?

As a beginner, most of us know only about Adsense. To be honest, Adsense is the driving force behind me and many other bloggers when they started off. It is true that we have so many choices now. Just to quote a few: Adbrite, Bidvertiser, Clickbooth, Project Wonderful and so on. The advertisements from Adbrite and Bidvertiser looks almost similar to Adsense. But, how about their performance? Do you get better returns from them?

Do you use Google Adsense?
With these questions in mind, I ran a poll on this blog titled "Do you use Google Adsense?". The following graph displays the results of the poll:


Neither the poll has any scientific background to support the pattern nor the people participated in the poll are representative. But, the pattern of advertising is in similar lines to what I expected. One quarter of the bloggers are clearly supporting Google Adsense while another quarter have completely dumped Adsense out of their blogs. But, one-third of the bloggers are running both Adsense and other advertisements on their blogs. I am not going to discuss anything about 20% of the bloggers who have no advertisements on their blogs.

Further Discussion on Google Adsense
I will stop there now. But, I will come back with my views in my next post. In the meanwhile, here are some questions for your thought:

1. Why do you think Google Adsense is the best? Or why do you think it is not?
   
2. If you have stopped using Google Adsense, why?
   
3. What other modes of advertisements are you using? Why did you choose them? How do you find them?

Please feel free to add your views or thoughts different from the above lines. I will use some of the interesting comments in my future posts as an example to discuss. Of course, you will get a link back to your blog if I use your comments for my discussion. Please subscribe to my feed if you like this post

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Say No to Sponsored Posts

I have decided to put an end to writing sponsored/ paid reviews. In fact, I had not been writing any paid posts for the past six months. I also recommend my readers/ other fellow bloggers to stop writing for payment. To start off, I have removed the affiliate links to paid posts site from my "Money Makers" list on the side bar.

Why "No" to Sponsored Posts?
I am not going against any particular company. But, generally, I lost interest in the paid posts arena. I had built up this site from scratch and went up to PR4. But, now it stands at PR0. But, you may ask, who cares about Google PR? Many of us, including me, have argued that we can survive without Google. Let us acknowledge, friends, it is not easy to get traffic without the help of the biggest search engine.

I had been ranking in the front page for many keywords, but Google slowly de-indexed me from the Search Engine Results. Now, I had to work hard for each and every visitor. Yes, I am still getting considerable traffic through other sources like Entrecard, BloggingZoom, myLot, and so on. But, I have to earn each visitor. To get a visitor from Entrecard, I have to drop a card. You cannot survive ever this way.

While I am still getting some money through affiliate links for sponsored posts site, I felt it is not right to sell something which I don't like myself. You might still see posts related to Smorty, PayPerPost and similar sites here. But, I will remove the affiliate links eventually so that no one goes through me.

Believe me, Google is All. If you want to survive in the blogging world, play by the rules of the biggest search engine. Otherwise, the chances are high that you will perish.

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Blogs Don't Make Money

Do you agree with me that blogs don't make money? Some of you would say yes. Millions of you would say no (otherwise, why do I see so many advertisements on every other blog?).

Myth about making money
The truth is blogs can make money. But, there is no easy way out. Don't get trapped by the word "make money by blogging". Its not as simple as that. When I started off, I wrote a few posts and inserted Google AdSense ads at all possible locations and waited for people to click. It didn't happen.

On the right path
It took me nearly a year to realize that it is not easy to make money by blogging. For a while, I started to purely concentrate on my blogging and forget about making money with blogs. This is the period I started to get many backlinks and started to build up my reader base. I got good ranks on Google, Technorati and Alexa. My blog was as high as PR4 at one stage.

Never write sponsored reviews, unless you are John Chow
This is when I was swayed by sponsored reviews. I started to make some good money by writing sponsored reviews. There were lot of offers as my blog had a good ranking. Then, Google slapped the penalty for writing sponsored content. So, this blog went down to PR0. The sponsored content companies immediately stopped offering any good review opportunities to me. I realized that Google Page Rank is the king here. Even though everyone tries to play down Google's ranking system, they certainly have the say in your blog's success. I learnt a lesson the hard way.

How to make money?
So, here's my advice to newcomers (who has an intention to make money by blogging):

1. Start off with a good and interesting topic to write about. It can be on car buying, advice on bikes, gardening, diabetes care or even on a celebrity. But, ensure that you write about the topic consistently. No point in writing about everything under the world.


2. Get your blog indexed by Google. Please click here to find out how you can get indexed and rank #1 in Google


3. Get backlinks from blogs with similar content/ from your own niche. Please click here to read why links are important.


4. Once you have few posts, include Google AdSense advertisements. If you are going to use AdSense, do not join in any traffic building networks. It doesn't help. These networks will increase your traffic, but will reduce your Click Through Rate (CTR) and eventually your earnings per click.


5. Concentrate on specific keywords and improve on your Search Engine Page Ranking. Please click here to read how to write your content for search engines.


6. If you are making money already, then it's fine. If not, try to change the location of your ads or change the colour of your links. Experiment and see whether you have any improvement in the clicks


7. If you still don't get clicks and your CTR lies below 2% mark, it's time to consider other modes of advertising. I suggest Project Wonderful at this point of time. Project Wonderful is based on "cost per day" advertisements compared to "cost per click" approach by Adsense. I have started using this recently and looks good so far. If you start using Project Wonderful, then probably you can look at improving your traffic through networks like Entrecard.


8. Sponsored Reviews are good for short term benefits. Do not use them if you have an intention to stay in the blogging world for a longer period

I have touched on few controversial issues above and certainly there will be views that are for and against them. Feel free to share your views. Please subscribe to my feed if you like this post

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Get Traffic with Current Events

Bring in traffic! As Much As Possible! Every blogger aims to do this. Some succeed, Many Fail. Why? We are not very sure of the best ways to bring in traffic. We explore new paths along the way; drop those that did not work for us. I am going to share with you something that worked well for me recently. The case study has nothing to do with "Assess My Blog"(I have better traffic than what is shown below).

I have taken another blog from my network to explain the strategy. Most importantly, I did not spend any time or money in promoting the blog. All I did is to write the post and forget it. Here is a snapshot of the traffic chart for the last two weeks for the blog in discussion:



As you can notice in the chart, there were about 265 unique visitors and 385 page loads on 7th April. On the following day, the blog generated 95 visitors with 115 page loads. If you look at the two-week data, you could notice that the traffic on 7th April jumped about 50 times the average. How did it happen? Let me tell you, this traffic is not from StumbleUpon or Digg or any other social media sites. I do not have any traffic exchange program in this blog like Entrecard. The bulk of the traffic, I would say about 95%, came from search engines like Google and Yahoo.

How did I get the Traffic?
I happened to be in a train when an accident at another station delayed me for about two hours. I took some pictures of the chaos that followed the accident. When I reached home, I wrote a post with my personal experience and first-hand count of what happened. Within hours, I noticed that visitors were flowing in to read my post.

What is the Secret here?
The trick and the keyword here is Current Events. Write about something that people are crazy about. Do you know what people are searching for right now? Then, write about it. If you are writing about an established topic, there are hundreds/ thousands of blogs fighting for the front page of Google or Yahoo. So, you may not be able to compete with them. But, if you are writing about something that is new, then the search engines will propel your blog up the ladder.

What should you write about?
About an accident just happened in your vicinity, about the traffic jam in the expressway of your city, about the rainy climate in your town, the important points of the speech by the Prime Minister or whatever that is current.

Can I compete with Online Media?
Good question. How can I compete with BBC or CNN when it comes to current events and latest News? This is where the power of blogging comes. Try searching for a current topic and see how many times an unknown blog tops the search in Google. You would be surprised. The search engines' algorithm gives much more importance to blogs than conventional web sites. So, all you have to do is think a little bit before you write.

How should I write?
You have to write your content with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in mind. Your title should include the keywords that most people would search for. Write a detailed description with at least about 150 to 250 words. Repeat the keywords inside the post without spamming. Keyword density, the ratio of the keyword to the total number of words, is important for you to appear higher on the search engines. Ensure that the topic is relevant to the overall theme of your blog.

The positive side of this technique is it primarily targets search engines. As such, you get traffic without any promotion. More importantly, these are the visitors who click on your advertisements and help you make some money. Please subscribe to my feed if you like this post

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How to Improve Your Earnings with PayPerPost?

If you have not signed up with PayPerPost yet, please read my earlier post 5 things to note before signing up with PayPerPost.

If you have signed already, then the following tips should help you to improve your earnings with PayPerPost:

• Blogs with better Google PageRank and Alexa Ranking gets the highly paid opportunities. So, work towards improving your Google PR and Alexa traffic rank. In simple terms, get more inbound links and get more visitors. Engage your visitors for a longer time on your blog and ensure they at least visit few pages.



• Even if you have a good Page Rank, if your blog is on a free domain like BlogSpot you will be missing out lot of opportunities. If possible, get your own domain. I notice that most of the advertisers impose a restriction that the blogs should have their own domain.



• You have to check the PPP site regularly for new opportunities. Good opportunities disappear at a rapid pace. You have about 6 hours to write about the opportunity you have reserved.



• Use their affiliate programs to promote PPP. They have a comprehensive set of tools to implement like sign-up forms, get paid to review post button and the referral images.

If you have any other strategy to improve the earnings with PPP, please share with us here for the benefit of others. Please subscribe to my feed if you like this post

<< 5 things to note before signing up with PayPerPost
<< 3 things to note after signing up with PayPerPost

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3 things to note after signing up with PayPerPost

If you have not signed up with PayPerPost yet, please read my earlier post 5 things to note before signing up with PayPerPost.

If you have signed already, then please take note of the following:

1. Please be patient with PPP. They might take longer than the duration indicated on their website.



2. If they reject your blog, review the stated reasons. Do take the rejection positively. For your information, my first blog has been rejected thrice before finally getting the approval. Even my second blog was rejected once.



3. Implement the changes suggested and resubmit your blog for approval. PPP is fairly systematic in their review process. If you address their concerns properly, your blog will be approved.

What is your experience after signing up with PayPerPost? Please share with us here for the benefit of others. Please subscribe to my feed if you like this post

<< 5 things to note before signing up with PayPerPost

How to Improve Your Earnings with PayPerPost? >>

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5 things to note before signing up with PayPerPost

If you would like to find out why PayPerPost is good, please read my earlier post Money Makers For Me: PayPerPost.

Most of my affiliates have problem in getting their blog approved, since they did not stick to the guidelines provided by PPP. I am going to list it down here. If you follow these, the chances are high that your blog will be approved. It is fairly EASY to get the approval.

1. Please ensure that your blog is at least 90 days old. Your blog will not be approved if it is less than 90 days old, unless you have huge traffic to your blog.



2. Please ensure that you post regularly. You cannot have a break of more than 30 days between any two consecutive posts.



3. Submitted blogs must have at least 20 written posts in the past 90 days.



4. Do not curtail your posts on the home page. Some blogs prefer to provide just a few lines of each post on the home page and then provide a ‘Read More …’ link to view the complete post. PPP do not accept this. The entire posts must be visible on the page with the posts themselves as well as the main page of your blog.



5. PPP is having a promotion which pays $20 for your first post on the given opportunity. I am not sure how long this promotion will stay. Please confirm at the PPP site before signing up.
   
   Alternatively, PPP offers the Get Paid to Review My Post promotion. If you sign up as a referral, you get $7.50 and your referrer gets $7.50. Sign up under this program as this will get some head-start for you and you have also done a favour to the blogger who tipped you on PPP.

I am not a PPP administrator. So, I am sharing only my own experience with PPP. If PPP has imposed any other requirements on your blog, please share with us here for the benefit of others. Please subscribe to my feed if you like this post

3 things to note after signing up with PayPerPost >>

<< MoneyMakers For Me: PayPerPost

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Money Makers for Me: PayPerPost

PayPerPost is one of the services that help me in monetizing this blog. If you are a blogger, then PPP is one of the best options for you to make money online. In fact, PPP top the list of my money makers. And, PPP top my affiliate programs too.

Why PPP is good?

1. PPP does not have any great requirements to sign up.


2. PPP provides bloggers with much more opportunities compared to other similar services.


3. Their approval process is transparent. If they reject your blog, they explain the reason and you get a chance to resubmit.


4. Provides good affiliate programs.


5. Payment is on schedule. You get the payment via PayPal immediately upon 30 days after the submission of your post

If you are interested in PayPerPost, click here to visit their sign up page. I will be posting a series of posts on PayPerPost. Read them too if you are not convinced yet.

Would you like to add any other point to stress that PPP is good? Or would you like to oppose my view that PPP is good? Please feel free to add your comments here. Please subscribe to my feed if you like this post

5 Things to Note Before Signing up with PayPerPost >>

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Benefit from the blog advertising industry

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Update on 05 Jan 09: I have stopped writing sponsored reviews and I do not recommend them on this blog any more

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The current trend in the industry is to get bloggers to write sponsored reviews of products, services or websites. With millions of blogs around, it is proven that blog advertising is an effective mode of marketing. While advertisers found it to be an economical and quick mode of reaching the customers, the bloggers found it an effective way to monetize their blogs.

In line with the growth of the blog advertising industry, Blogsvertise has setup a blog advertising service that helps bloggers and online journal writers to earn revenue from their online blog/journal in an easy to use, simple and effective system.

The better part is that you do not have to endorse the product/service that you are writing about. You can discuss it however you want, compliment it, review it, discuss how it relates to something going on recently or in the past in your life, or even complain about it. Your blog/entry should be at least 60-100 words and contain a minimum of three links.

Click Here to Advertise on My Blog

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My blog is approved by Smorty

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Update on 05 Jan 2009: I have stopped writing sponsored posts and I do not recommend them any more on this blog.

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I have recently signed up with Smorty as a blogger. While one of my other blogs was approved instantly, AssessMyBlog was rejected. It is sometimes hard to understand the logic behind such a rejection. But, I think the reason being that AssessMyBlog is fairly new in the arena and the traffic is not that significant when I did apply.

In line with the increase in my blog traffic since last month, I expected Smorty to clear my application. As expected, today I received an e-mail from Smorty stating that my blog is approved. In case you do not know about Smorty, here is a quick preview:

About Smorty:
Smorty is a service that acts as a communication link between advertisers and bloggers. It helps advertisers to promote a product, service, company, blog or a web site. It provides a cost-effective solution to advertise on blogs. It provides a way for bloggers to monetize their blogs.

Advertise on blogs:
The advertisers get a chance to display their products through quality blogs. The blogs, which already have a good amount of readership, provide a quick way to reach a wide customer base. By advertising on blogs, the advertisers can build quality relevant inbound links to increase search engine rankings. No wonder, blog advertising is considered as one of the best advertising strategies available now.

Get paid for blogging:
Bloggers, like me, have worked hard to create an online existence. Now, this standing on the blogosphere can be used to some good effect. Smorty pays the bloggers to review the advertiser’s products. The blogger can express his/ her honest opinions/ thoughts on the product. Smorty does not enforce bloggers to write only positive reviews about the products.

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