Identifying the Top Blogs in Your Niche
Why Do You Want to Identify Top Blogs in Your Niche?
If you plan on entering a market or are just interested in learning about or studying a certain market then you will want to know where the top sites are located. This is the fastest and most effective way to gather the resources needed to learn about your industry. From current events, who are the top advertisers, the size of the market, and how tough it will be to enter the market, understanding your competition is a key to your future success. It is also a great way to drive traffic to an existing site by interacting with a top blog by either commenting on popular posts to networking with the blog owner for nurturing a business relationship.
How To Identify the Top Blogs
Technorati
The Technorati blog directory has a pretty good list of the top blogs sorted for you by topic. I say "pretty good" because tagging your blog on Technorati used to be considered an essential step into getting yourself established, but now that just isn't the case. Many top bloggers don't even bother adding themselves to the directory anymore, but still, I would say most top blogs are listed here and it's a good place to start your search.
Ask Blog Search
Ask has a pretty nice search engine for looking at blogs that have the keywords that are contained in your niche. You won't see very much spam in the Ask.com index and Ask built their reputation on being able to find clusters, or groups of related sites that supposedly gave a better indication of authority. The problem with Ask is that you are still going to see some strange feeds showing up in your results congesting the page.
Google Blog Search
The leading search engine on the web also does a pretty good job of helping you find related blogs with their specialized blog search. The start page allows you to click through to very general categories and here you will see massive blogs that are very generalized. When you do a search you will get a related blogs list that shows you blogs that have your keywords in their title, plus you will see the search results bringing up certain blog posts that are related to your keyword. I personally use the google blog search quite a bit to find posts to comment on that are related to something I just wrote. The problem here though is that you also get a lot of forum posts, which aren't really blogs but for some reason are included in this index.
As you can see there isn't an all-encompassing tool that will work perfectly to help you find all of the top blogs in your niche, but if you use the three sites above you can start to get a pretty good feel on what's out there.
Where to Put Ads on Your Blog
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.
How to Start a Blog
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:
- So you want to create a WordPress theme?
- Creating a WordPress theme from scratch
- A 3-step guide on how to create a WordPress theme from scratch
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.
Web Analytics & Tracking
If you have a website or a blog then you should know about web analytics. You can learn a lot about your site, what works, and what doesn't if you take a look at your stats on a frequent basis. Most hosting companies provide some kind of stats software, but I recommend adding Google Analytics to your site in order to get a complete picture of what your visitors are doing and where they came from. Best of all, it's FREE to use!
Here are a few metrics that I think everyone should keep a close eye on. There are countless of different options in the Google Analytics back end that you can track, but don't get bogged down in spending too much time back there. However, if you are paying for any advertising I would track the ROI on those campaigns, but that's a topic for another day so let's get started with this simple list.
Visitors
This is the most basic metric to monitor. With all things being equal if you get more traffic then that should mean your site will make more money right? If your goal is to keep increasing your general traffic numbers then you should continue to make more money from your site.
Pageviews
This is how many pages your visitors are looking at. Increasing the number of pageviews will increase the "eyes" on advertisements which will help you charge more for your space. Linking to relevant posts at the end of each article is a great way to increase the pageviews on your site as your visitors spend more time looking at your content.
Referring Sites
Who is linking to you and how much traffic are they generating for you by doing so? If you get a lot of traffic from a link then maybe you should think about partnering up with that site or writing a guest post for them. If you are doing advertising then tracking click through traffic lets you know if it's generating a positive return on your investment.
Keywords
How are your visitors finding you in the search engines? Google the keywords found in this section of your analytics to see where you rank in the results. A few more internal links to that page could boost you up a few spots in the results and bring you even more traffic than you are already getting.
You will also find topics to write about and areas that you might want to focus on when you see which keywords visitors used to find you. For long tail keywords you can rewrite some of your content to include those phrases and see a boost for those terms as well. There are lots of things you can do from an SEO standpoint if you keep an eye on the keywords people are using to find you.
What other metrics do you track? This list is pretty basic but I think it covers the most important stats to look for.
How to Find a Successful Niche
The key to making money online these days is to find a successful niche to market to. You aren't going to be the giants out there like Wal-Mart and Best Buy so why are you trying?
The first thing for you to figure out is what exactly a niche market is. Let's use the example of music. Most of the giant department stores like Wal-Mart only carry a small percentage of artists, and even though only a limited selection of albums from those artists. A niche would be insound.com, which carries more alternative or lesser known artists.
So how do you find your niche to be successful in? Well here are a few tips for niche research that I have to help you come up with some ideas.
What's in the News?
Find out what is going on in the world and which current events are getting a lot of attention. Pay attention to morning shows on network television which have several different segments on books, movies, and new products hitting the market. These shows do not put items on the air that they do not think their viewers would be interested in hearing about, so you can let them do the market research for you!
Make a List of Things You Are Interested In
It's going to be much tougher to succeed in a market you do not care anything about. I have found that the best way to get traffic to my sites is to write content. That can take many shapes and forms, but knowing about a topic and writing about it is the single most important thing you can do to grow your site. How tough is it to write about something you aren't interested in? I've done it, and my work suffered from it. Make it easy on yourself and only get into a niche that you are interested in.
Do Keyword Research
You can't go after general keywords, so get specific and then see if there is anything related to the keyword you can use. You also want to check the traffic numbers because if nobody is searching for your term, how many people are actually interested in it? Not many.
I personally recommend the SEO Book tool and using Google's keyword tool.
Now you have three simple steps to help you find a successful niche to make money online. If you have any other tips and tricks you've used in the past to discover a niche market to sell in then I would love to hear about them in the comments.
What Should Go on a Disclaimer Page
If you want to be taken seriously as a blogger then you might want to think about adding a disclaimer page to your site. The key to the page is to disclose any potential conflict of interest you may have between yourself and what you are writing about. It is our belief that too much disclosure is better than not enough, but there is a large gray area covering what is considered necessary and what may be going too far. Think of sites like CNN.com. If they talk about Money Magazine or take a quote from them, the author will normally include that they are owned under the same corporate umbrella so the reader knows about the tie between the two companies. How about if CNN.com talks about Netflix, do you see them adding to the story that NetFlix buys banner ads on the site? Not at all. So when should you disclose?
Financial Association
If you have a financial association with the subject of your post or story then you should disclose it. I don't mean advertising, which should seem obvious to the visitor. If they see banner ads posted everywhere then they should know that you are geting paid for that space and aren't displaying banners out of the kindness of your heart. However, you should disclose when you are an owner or part-owner of a company displayed or talked about on your site. If you are getting paid by the company you are writing about, either as an employee or as a contractor, then you should disclose that. You should also put up a discloser if you are in financial competition with a company you are writing about. If an owner of MySpace is going to write about how terrible Facebook is, then don't you think you should know there might be a financial gain for them if MySpace is chosen over Facebook by the reader?
Personal Involvement
The slippery slope comes in to play when you talk about personal involvement. If a friend owns a company you are writing about, you may want to mention it. How close of a friend does it have to be before it's worth mentioning? Well, I supposed that is up to the writer to decide, but I prefer being overly informative. If you are talking about a family member though, you should let the reader know about your relationship.
What do you think should go on the disclaimer page or be disclosed by writers? Have you seen a site disclose too much or not enough? Let's hear about it in the comments.
Benefits of a Contact Us Page
It's very important for every site owner to have a way for readers to contact them. If there are visitors who have to spend more than a few seconds looking for a way to get a hold of someone from your site, then you could possibly miss out on a sale, a profitable business relationship, a question worth answering via a post, and I think you get my point. The question really should be why wouldn't you want your readers to contact you. Let's look at some of the benefits of a contact us page in order to further motivate you to get your up and running.
Private Communication
Sure, having comments on your blog generates a sense of community, and we've even spent time trying to teach you how to get more comments on your blog because we think they are so valuable, but not everyone is going to want to ask their question publicly. If you give your readers a way to contact someone via email then they will feel they can talk in private.
Accessibility
If your visitors have a way to get in touch with you then they will feel like they can pitch you their ideas or just let you know that they appreciate what you are doing for them. It also shows that you are willing to take responsibility for the content of your site and welcome criticism. If there is a problem with your site or blog, then your visitors can let you know about it. No site owner has time to monitor their site 24/7 and the thousands of pages they may have.
Opportunities
Like I said in the introduction, visitors could be contacting you in order to ask a couple of questions before purchasing something from your site, or maybe they want to partner up with you on a business venture. The questions that they ask could work great for future articles or posts.
I know that some site owners worry about privacy issues or that if their email is posted they will get spammed to death. Take it from me, someone who manages rather large sites that get tons of traffic, I have never had a problem letting my readers know who I am and what my email address is. As for spam, that's why I go with GMail!
Have you gotten anything else out of having a contact us page? Let me hear your story in the comments!
What to Put On Your About Us Page
When a new visitor comes to your site and wants to know what it is about where do you think they turn to? Hopefully your answer was the "About Us" page, but how up-to-date is yours? Take a look at some suggestions I have for what to include on this section of your site in order to give your visitor an idea of what you are all about.
Personalize the Page
Your visitors should be able to put a face to the name of the person they are reading about. It will give your site a human touch. If you are selling a product people want to buy from people, not un-named companies. If you are selling information then they want to know you are an expert and not a pimply-faced, unkept 15-year old kid. Provide a professional looking photo and your About Us page will be off to a positive start.
Short Summary
In the introduction section of your about page you should have a short and sweet summary of the information that you cover on the site. Keep it short in case the reader doesn't have a lot of time or just wants a quick overview, if they want more details details then you will give them more specific information further down the page.
Your Details
After the summary you can go into further details as to what type of site you are running and some personal information about yourself such as your name, occupation, location, education, previous sites your have written for and worked for, and whatever else you would put on a job resume. That's how you should see the about us page, as a resume. You are selling yourself to your visitors so put your best foot forward.
Contact Information
Make sure that you include a link to the contact us page or provide the contact means on the about us page. This emans an email address, or if applicable, phone number and physical address.
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.