One of the more popular questions I have been asked when helping someone start a blog is where to put ads in order to maximize revenues. The important thing to remember here is that not every blog is the same, which means that you are going to have to test some different designs and ad formats in order to increase your click throughs, which should mean an increase in revenue from advertisements whether it is through affiliate programs or cost per clicks.
The picture on the left shows the hot zones according to google adsense. These are the locations that their studies show ad placements generate the most clicks. While looking to see what the graph shows and mimicking it on your site might work out just fine, let's dig a little deeper and figure out why those spots are as premium as they are.
The first thing that you might notice is that above the fold ads do a lot better than below the fold. This stands to reason since the user doesn't have to scroll down to see the ads.
You'll also notice that ads on the left do better than ads on the right, which fits in the Western style format of reading a page from left to right.
Users also focus in on the content, so the top of the content area is the best place for ads. However, the end of the content area also does well, and in my research I find that this is a great place for text ads for relevant sites, simply because the user has finished reading your peice and is either looking for more information on the topic, or they are interested in the topic and any related products or services will catch their eyes.
A few additional points that I have noticed personally. Larger banner ads do better than smaller banners. I think this is because the advertiser has more room to put information on a large banner and thus can draw the user in.
I have also noticed banners do well when the user is forced to look over it. If you put a banner between the menu and the content, or if you break up the middle of the content with a banner, those two positions have worked out great for me in the past.
I also like the stripe ads at the top of the blog, you can pick those up by going to Max Blog Press. Text link ads inside your content also do a good job of generating clicks, so if you write reviews or just link to something relevant in your content. You can automatically change the keywords in your blog by using the Ninja Affiliate program.
These are just some of the things that I consider when I'm putting ads on a site. Do you have any additional tips or tricks? If so, I'd love to hear about them in the comments.
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I know there are all kinds of best of lists for WordPress plugins, but I figured I would put together my own. I can vouch for all of these and use them personally on every WordPress blog that I create. So let's get down to it:
Advertising
1. Ad Rotator - I like to use big banners, but in order to give each sponsor love I rotate through them. This is a free, simple plugin that just reads from a text file.
2. Stripe Ads - A great place to put a text link advertisement is on top of your site. This is the first place a new visitor will look when they come to your site, so it's a great way to sell them on something you beleive in!
3. Ninja Affiliate - Convert keywords to outgoing links for products that you are affiliated with!
Spam Protection
4. Askimet - The standard is as good as anything else I've found out there. I feel like it works good enough so that I don't even really have anything else.
SEO
5. All-in-One SEO Pack - Pretty much what the name says. If you want to get as much search engine exposure as possible you need this plugin.
6. Google News Sitemap Generator - If you have a site listed in google news, then this is a great way to make sure that all of your stories get indexed quickly.
7. Google XML Generator - This works great if you have webmaster tools through google and you want to keep your XML file up to date.
8. No Follow Plugin - This gives you the option when creating a link to make it no follow, which you should do if you don't "trust" the site you are linking to, or if you are getting paid to link there.
9. SEO Slugs - Keeps your URLS shorter and sweeter.
10. SEO Friendly Images - Automatically adds title and alt tags to the pictures that you post.
Comments
11. Comment Relish - A great way to engage the visitors to your blog who end up leaving a comment. This sends them an email if they are a first-time poster, a great way to thank them and tell them about the different options to subscribe to your blog.
12. Subscribe to Comments - Encourages discussion by allowing commenters to be notified via email of any further comments relating to the post.
RSS
13. Feedsmith - Redirects all of your feeds to your Feedburner account.
14. Feed Statistics - Tells you who is reading your blog via RSS and what they are reading.
15. RSS Atom Avatar - Adds an image and favicon to your RSS feeds.
16. RSS Footer - Adds a line of text to the bottom of your RSS feed. Great for getting the anchor text you want if scrapers are stealing your content, advertisements, or a copyright notice.
17. More Feeds - Use this plugin if you want your readers to be able to subscribe to specific categories. Applicable for large blogs that have a large amount of content and specific categories.
Misc
18. WP Super Cache - Simply put, this makes your Word Press blog faster.
19. Get the Image - If you like to post pictures with each post, this will grab the image so you can post a thumbnail on your archive, category, or home page.
20. Database Backup - You are backing up your data right?
21. WordTwit - Sends out a tweet every time you update your blog.
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I'm going to try out a new form of advertising with the addition of the Stripe Ad to my sites. This is the single line of text that is displayed at the top of the site in a nice, clean stripe.
I've also thought about using the Stripe Ad as a call to action which will take users to a specific landing page, maybe of a hot product that I am selling. There are some sites where people I never read our terms of service, so this might be a good spot to draw their attention, or to display breaking news.
Another nice thing about the ad is that you can rotate it between several different ads, which is perfect for testing, and I'm a big fan of testing in order to maximize conversions. If you want to weight one ad more heavily than another you can do that as well.
A nice thing about the Stripe ad is that you can customize the look of it to match you blog, with options on the font type, text size, alignment, and colors.
If you want to add the Stripe Ad to your blog then visit MaxBlog Press and download it yourself!
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One of the things I love about having a blog over a traditional website is the feedback that you can receive via comments. I get comments on my blogs from readers on how helpful they have found an article, if I've made a mistake, or about just anything else. Yes, there are a few bad apples out there who want to bash you any chance they can get, but engagement with your readers is worth the slight pains the few can cause.
I've talked about a few tricks I use in the how to get more comments post, but it does help to optimally set your site up to increase discussion. Let's take a look at a few helpful hacks and plugins I've used in the past.
Comment Link
I often see the plain "No Comments" text at the bottom of posts, but what if instead you put "No Comments yet, but what are your thoughts on this article?" If you ask your readers their opinion then they are more likely to give it to you. This is an easy fix. Open up your index.php template and search for the comments_popup_link() and change the value from the one above to something more engaging.
Thank Your First Time Commentors
A great way to get people to keep doing something is to praise them, so how about after they finally post their thoughts on one of your articles you redirect them to a page that thanks the reader for taking the time to comment on your post. For this you can use the comment redirect plugin, or if you just want to send an email instead of a redirect us the comment relish plugin. Both of these will only effect first time commentors, so you won't be bugging your every day readers.
Keep the Conversation Going
A great way to keep the conversation going is to display the most recent comments first. This way the user doesn't have to scroll down to the bottom of a long list to see if there are any updates. Also, if you have a long lasting post recent comments can be valuable to let a new reader know the post is still valid.
Once people actually start discussing something on your blog, you will want to keep them in the conversation and a great way to do that is with the subscribe to comments plugin. This plugin will send the commentor an email when there is an update to the comments, getting them to come back and keep the conversation alive.
Also, by allowing readers to subscribe to your comments via an RSS feed you can help them stay up to date on what others are saying.
I also like to style the author comments, so people know when I'm responding to comments or have anything extra I would like to add.
Are there any other hacks or plugins you use to increase reader comments? If so I would love to hear about them.
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A question I am often asked by my friends is "how can I start a blog?" Most of the time they either hate their jobs or want to earn a little extra money and they have seen from my experiences that making money online by blogging offers a great lifestyle with plenty of personal freedom. Of course, just putting up a site and writing a post every now and then isn't going to open up the flood gates so cash can start pouring in, so I thought I would create a complete series for people to use as a guide on how to start a blog, and then how to monetize the site after traffic picks up.
Before Your First Post
The first thing you have to do when starting you blog is to decide what you want to write about. You need to find a niche that you are passionate about because you are going to be writing about the topic so frequently. This is a subject area that you are going to have to read a lot about and cover in-depth so focus on something you already enjoy doing. To help you get started, make a list of areas you are interested in and ask your friends to make a list of your interests. A mistake too many people make is to try and start blogging about something they think will make them money but have no interest in. These blogs die out quickly as the owner loses interest.
The next thing you are going to want to do is pick a domain name for your site over at GoDaddy. Be creative, but think short and sweet. You want your name to be brandable and not "thebestblogonnflfootballplayers.com." Who is going to remember that? By the way, there are plenty of free blog hosts out there, but you definitely want to spend the few dollars and get one you host yourself. It's more professional and there aren't as many limits on what you can do with your site.
After you have your domain picked out you are going to want to find a good hosting company. I personally recommend HostGator as the top choice. First off, it's fairly cheap and more importantly they are incredibly reliable. If you are just starting out with building your website, another great feature they offer is Fantastico to install WordPress, so you will not need any technical knowledge whatsoever.
The last thing you need to do before you get started is to download a theme for your blog. This is the design or the look and feel of your blog. You might have to shell out a few dollars if you want it to look professional, but there are plenty of free choices out there as well. If you are going to do it yourself then here are some resources to help you get started:
After you have completed these four steps, you will have started your very own blog. Pretty basic and easy right? Now for the hard part as we get into the details of what pages you need to have, how often should you post, and other blogging tips and tricks designed to help you make money online.
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If you have recently started a blog, or are just now starting to get people to visit your exiting blog, then Twitter can be a great tool for you to use in order to get traffic to your site. I've created this post as a general overview of the platform so even if you currently don't have a Twitter account, you can become a marketing pro with the service in no time by following these few simple steps.
Establish Your Goal
The first thing that you need to do when integrating Twitter into your marketing plan is to establish your goal. Do you want to become a superstar who has thousands of followers? Do you want to become the authority in your niche? Do you want to keep your community small but then have close relationships with your followers? Decided which path you want to follow is important in establishing your plan because if you want to be a superstar with thousands of followers you will need a different plan than if you want more meaningful relationships with a small set of followers. Whatever your goal is though, you'll want to have a solid set Twitter tools to use.
Best Twitter Tools
In my post on the best tools to use for Twitter I talk about each of these in detail, but to summarize I recommend signing up at Social Too for automating your following and unfollowing and using a client to manage your Twitter account: Twhirl for desktops and TwitterFox for your FireFox browser. You should also stay in touch with what's going on in the Twitter world with sites like twitt(url)y and twittURLs. If you are using your blog to promote your twitter account, then use a button from TwitButtons and display your follower count with Twitter Count to drive interest. You also need a URL-shortening service, for which I recommend Zi.ma. If you want a complete resource to tools to use on Twitter, there aren't a lot of compilations that are better than the Ultimate Twitter Guide by New Media Bytes.
Get Followed
The only way you are going to make money using Twitter is if you have people following you, or better yet listening to you. Your strategy on how to get people to follow you on Twitter is going to be different depending on your goals, but you can still use these general guidelines no matter what, just be more selective on who you are following if you want closer relationships. It all boils down to following relevant people, sprucing your profile up to maximize the chances people will want to follow you, actually tweeting about interesting topics, and promoting yourself the right way. By the way are you following me on Twitter yet? How about the top 20 entrepreneurs to follow on Twitter as ranked by SMM Guru?
How to Use Twitter for Marketing
Once you have the right tools to use and you have built up a following, it's time for Twitter marketing. Since it's a lot easier to make money on your blog via advertisements, affiliate programs, or selling a product than it is with tweets, I feel the best way to use Twitter for money making purposes is to drive people to your blog. Now how do you do that? The best ways are to ask questions with a link to a post of yours discussing the topic, tweeting about breaking news in your niche, posting valuable resources people can use, and giving away something for free on your site to people following you. If you do those four things, you'll drive traffic to your site and have people wanting to hear more about what you have to say. I would also recommend this article from Mike Smith, who talks about how to benefit from Twitter marketing where others fail. In particular I liked his landing page and background image ideas. Twitip also has a nice read on how to market a niche website using Twitter.
Do you have any other helpful tips to help people make money online using Twitter? I'd love to hear about them in the comments.
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If you want to take advantage of using Twitter for marketing then you have to have the right tools. This list should help you sort through the masses of information and manage your account more effectively.
Automation
I hate people who follow me and then when I reciprocate they quickly unfollow me. It's like they think they are cool or more important if they have this massive number of followers but aren't following anyone. I like using Twitter to build relationship that mutually benefit both me and the other person so I found Social Too to automatically follow and unfollow people who do the same for me. Is this perfect? No, because there are some people who are following me that I don't really have a desire to follow back, but I can always unfollow them if I notice an aggravating trend. This tool is pretty useful if you are using the principles in my how to get people to follow you on Twitter article.
If you want to get the most out of Twitter then you should have some kind of application for your device that makes it easy to use. Here are some of my top choices:
Desktop - For my Twitter desktop application I use twhirl. With twhirl you have open several different accounts at once, which is convenient if you want to open one Twitter account for business and another for personal use.
Phone - I use a Windows Mobile device and I've found Twobile to be the best client for my device.
FireFox - If you use Firefox then you should download the TwitterFox plugin. It notifies you of any recent tweets, plus allows you to sign in to more than on account at a time.
Tracking your latest news and updates
Tweetbeep
I'm using Tweetbeep to not only track what people are saying about me, but also keywords for my niche. This will help me stay up to date on breaking news in the industry, and also to make sure I am following people out there who are posting great tweets that are relevant to my interests.
twitt(url)y
I also stay up to date on what's hot in the Twitter World by using twitt(url)y. Think of it kind of like Digg but for tweets.
TwittURLs
TwittURLs is similiar to twitt(url)y, but focuses on more recent twitter activity.
Site Buttons
Add some flair to your site or blog with buttons to lead readers know they can follow you on Twitter. Both TwitButtons and TwitterButtons.com have several different options for you to choose from. Plus, once you start to get quite a few followers you can show off your Twitter Count with this chiclet.
Short URL Service
Zi.ma and cli.gs are both good for tracking stats and making sure you get the link love passed through. Poprl.com can get you some traffic if you become one of the most popular URLs clicked.
Search Tools
Twubble will help you find more people to follow. It searches your friends and finds the most popular people that they are following. Twitslikeme allows you to enter your screenname and it searches for other twitters who probably share your same interests. Twittersearch allows you to enter your topic in the find box and find tweets covering your search term.
Hopefully you will find this list of tools helpful as you start to do Twitter Marketing. If you think I've missed something let me hear about it in the comments.
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People use Twitter in a lot of different ways, from keeping friends and family up-to-date on what they are doing to getting answers to specific questions they might have. Smart Internet marketers are even using this platform in order to generate traffic to their sites and increase newsletter subscribers, places where they can make money. So, why aren't you doing any Twitter marketing?
Don't be one of those users who posts generic tweets like "New Post: (URL)" over and over again. Believe it or not, if your followers just wanted constant updates on when you made a new post they would just sign up for your RSS feed. So with one thing in the list of what-not-do covered let's take a look at some things you should be doing in order to use Twitter effectively to market your site.
Ask Questions
Instead of telling your followers you posted a new article on the Lakers/Celtics game tonight, why not ask, "Will the Celtics Beat the Lakers Again?" before adding the URL to your post. When you ask a question you engage the reader and encourage them to answer, which means a great chance they will go to your post, read what you have to say, and leave a comment. This works best if you keep the question simple and something your followers will have an opinion on or answer to. You don't even have to tweet your latest post. Instead you can use a topic that has generated some comments already on your site, so followers are joining the discussion instead of starting it (which is much more difficult to get them to do).
Report Breaking News in Your Niche
One of the quickest ways you can generate buzz on Twitter is to talk about breaking news in your niche. It also helps if you have a link to a post on your site discussing the issue even further. "Kobe Bryant traded from the Lakers?" with a link to your post talking about the implications of the trade and how stupid management is would surely get a few comments and readers. Plus a topic like that would generate some emotion. I'm a Lakers fan, and I'm almost stirred up about the trade even though I completely made it up a few moments ago!
Post Resources
You don't always have to tweet about things on your site. In fact, you will come off much more reputable, trustworthy, and reliable if you post great resources you find on other people's sites as well. If you discover a real gem in your niche on a site that isn't heavily visited, not only will that site owner thank you for the referral, but your followers will as well for giving them something they can use.
Give Something Away for Free!
This relates to the post above. Create an ebook that solves a problem faced by your followers, and they will be sure to retweet it, which inevitably grows your stature on Twitter. I also recommend you use a free giveaway for your followers. As soon as someone follows you then send an automated message to them with a thank you and a link to a free giveaway that they can actually use.
These are four different ways I have used to market my sites on Twitter and to market myself as an expert in this niches that I compete in. Of course you do need followers in order to get any of these techniques to work, and you do know how to get people to follow you on Twitter right?
Web Analytics World has a great collection of resources on Twitter marketing that's a must if you want to know more about the medium.
Do you have any other advice? I'd love to hear about it in the comments.
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One thing that I really like about using Twitter as a marketing tool over blogging or even newsletters is how easy it is to build a large following. Of course, it isn't nearly as easy to make money from these followers so don't just disregard your traditional marketing tools because you have a lot of followers on Twitter. If you are new to the platform or your numbers have been stagnant then hopefully this post will show you how to get more followers on Twitter.
Find People to Follow
Friends: Start off by finding the people that you already know, this way you can build up some decent numbers before using any additional tactics, which will help because there is a landslide effect on Twitter which shows the more people that are already following you the more that will start to do so. (I'm assuming of course that your friends will follow you back, I mean they are your friends right?)
People with the Same Interests: You want to search for people who share the same interests as you, for example if you like sports then follow sports news services, major blogs, etc.
Industry Leaders: Find the key people in your industry and follow the same people they are, since chances are you will be interested in them as well.
Suggester Tools: Twitter's suggestion tool will help you find other people to follow.
Pace Yourself: Don't go out and follow 1,000 people over the next hour. Besides the fact that you look spammy just for doing this, when people come to your page they will see that you are following a massive number, but not being followed by nearly as many. To them this must mean that you are not popular in relation to the people you are following. Other Twitter users are normally pretty quick to follow you if you are following them, so add a batch, wait it out, then add another. Rinse and repeat this process over time and you'll start to accumulate a following. Just make sure you have a fairly balanced follower/following ratio. It also stands to reason that you should not use a script or bot to add followers because this is spammy and could get you banned from the system.
Follow People Back
The whole point of Twitter is to build relationships with other people, after all it is a social media, so follow people back who follow you. As you start to get more popular on Twitter you will find that more and more people will start following you that you have never heard of before. If you follow every one of them back, you can lose track of the people that you actually signed up to follow. This is why you should probably have one account that you use for business and marketing that you strive for popularity and another you use just to follow the select few people you want to hear from. If you want to automatically follow people who follow you, sign up for TweetLater.
Be a Person
Seems obvious, right? I mean you are reading this article. Well, let's make sure that you are letting the Twitter universe know by going over the details on what I mean exactly by "be a person."
- Use a picture for an avatar - Show off your face and people will relate your tweets to you. A real picture for an avatar translates into you sharing real life experiences. Some people use a company or site logo to help with branding, but this isn't as personal and can cost you followers, but is better than nothing. If you just have the default image up then you can't be too serious about Twitter so why would anyone want to follow you?
- Name - You also want to have a real name and not just your company name.
- Details - Post a description or biography of yourself to give your account some personality.
- Add a link to your homepage - You want to let people know what you are about and what kind of information you will be providing, how else are they going to decide whether you are worth following or not? Besides, how are they going to visit your site if you don't provide a link and of course you want to increase your traffic numbers!
Again, this all adds up to showing that you are a real person and not spammer JohnDoe1212 or an evil corporate empire!
Tweet!
If your newest tweet was weeks ago then why would someone want to follow you? If you aren't updating your account then you must not be committed and are probably inactive. People want to know what you are currently doing or working on, but keep the noise to a minimum and don't spam everyone on your list. If you tweet more than 20 times per day you are clogging up my page and I will probably unfollow you. You also want your tweets to add value for your followers and contribute something to community, but they should also be fun so you don't bore your followers into ignoring you, or worse, unfollowing you! Great tweets on a consistent basis will not only help you to grow your following but also will get people to become more interested in what you are doing, thus driving traffic to your actual site.
Promote Yourself
There are several ways to promote yourself to increase your Twitter following. If you already have a blog then simply write a post about Twitter and add a link to your account in the article. If you have a newsletter send out a blast to your subscribers about how they can also follow you on Twitter. TwitterCounter has a chiclet that lets you show off how many followers that you currently have. Put your Twitter link in the signature of your emails or forum posts. You can even add cool buttons from TwitButtons or Twitter Buttons to spruce up your site a little bit.
Hopefully you will find this guide useful to growing your following on Twitter, and don't forget to follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/jamiefaidley!
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It is important to realize that when you are selling a product, you are including other components as well. So when you are creating your offer, remember that your product is the core, but there are plenty of things that you can wrap around it to make it more appealing to potential customers. Let's take a look at some examples.
If you go get a haircut that is only one part of the process, as the beautician will also have a variety of products to offer you from shampoos and conditioners to hair gels. It's a total package that they are offering, not just a simple haircut.
You also have to consider deliverability. How quickly can you get the product to your customer and in what fashion will you deliver it? If I'm buying a book online, I expect it to arrive in a matter of days, and I'm not going to pay $1 less to get it a month from now.
You can also charge more for a product if you offer superior support. If a customer can get in touch with someone on your sales team quickly and get their questions answered, that increases the chances you make the sale. If there is a problem with the product and they know they can get a replacement quickly and without any problems, that's boosts your value as well. Is your warranty clearly stated on your site? It needs to be.
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WordPress Comment Hacks & Plugins
One of the things I love about having a blog over a traditional website is the feedback that you can receive via comments. I get comments on my blogs from readers on how helpful they have found an article, if I've made a mistake, or about just anything else. Yes, there are a few bad apples out there who want to bash you any chance they can get, but engagement with your readers is worth the slight pains the few can cause.
I've talked about a few tricks I use in the how to get more comments post, but it does help to optimally set your site up to increase discussion. Let's take a look at a few helpful hacks and plugins I've used in the past.
Comment Link
I often see the plain "No Comments" text at the bottom of posts, but what if instead you put "No Comments yet, but what are your thoughts on this article?" If you ask your readers their opinion then they are more likely to give it to you. This is an easy fix. Open up your index.php template and search for the comments_popup_link() and change the value from the one above to something more engaging.
Thank Your First Time Commentors
A great way to get people to keep doing something is to praise them, so how about after they finally post their thoughts on one of your articles you redirect them to a page that thanks the reader for taking the time to comment on your post. For this you can use the comment redirect plugin, or if you just want to send an email instead of a redirect us the comment relish plugin. Both of these will only effect first time commentors, so you won't be bugging your every day readers.
Keep the Conversation Going
A great way to keep the conversation going is to display the most recent comments first. This way the user doesn't have to scroll down to the bottom of a long list to see if there are any updates. Also, if you have a long lasting post recent comments can be valuable to let a new reader know the post is still valid.
Once people actually start discussing something on your blog, you will want to keep them in the conversation and a great way to do that is with the subscribe to comments plugin. This plugin will send the commentor an email when there is an update to the comments, getting them to come back and keep the conversation alive.
Also, by allowing readers to subscribe to your comments via an RSS feed you can help them stay up to date on what others are saying.
I also like to style the author comments, so people know when I'm responding to comments or have anything extra I would like to add.
Are there any other hacks or plugins you use to increase reader comments? If so I would love to hear about them.
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