How can you make money online?
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10 Blog Traffic Tips
In every bloggers life comes a special day - the day they first launch a new blog. Now unless you went out and purchased someone else’’s blog chances are your blog launched with only one very loyal reader - you. Maybe a few days later you received a few hits when you told your sister, father, girlfriend and best friend about your new blog but that’’s about as far you went when it comes to finding readers.Here are the top 10 techniques new bloggers can use to find readers. These are tips specifically for new bloggers, those people who have next-to-no audience at the moment and want to get the ball rolling.It helps if you work on this list from top to bottom as each technique builds on the previous step to help you create momentum. Eventually once you establish enough momentum you gain what is called “traction”, which is a large enough audience base (about 500 readers a day is good) that you no longer have to work too hard on finding new readers. Instead your current loyal readers do the work for you through word of mouth.
Top 10 Tips
10. Write at least five major “pillar” articles. A pillar article is a tutorial style article aimed to teach your audience something. Generally they are longer than 500 words and have lots of very practical tips or advice. This article you are currently reading could be considered a pillar article since it is very practical and a good “how-to” lesson. This style of article has long term appeal, stays current (it isn’t news or time dependent) and offers real value and insight. The more pillars you have on your blog the better.9. Write one new blog post per day minimum. Not every post has to be a pillar, but you should work on getting those five pillars done at the same time as you keep your blog fresh with a daily news or short article style post. The important thing here is to demonstrate to first time visitors that your blog is updated all the time so they feel that if they come back tomorrow they will likely find something new. This causes them to bookmark your site or subscribe to your blog feed.You don”t have to produce one post per day all the time but it is important you do when your blog is brand new. Once you get traction you still need to keep the fresh content coming but your loyal audience will be more forgiving if you slow down to a few per week instead. The first few months are critical so the more content you can produce at this time the better.8. Use a proper domain name. If you are serious about blogging be serious about what you call your blog. In order for people to easily spread the word about your blog you need a easily rememberable domain name. People often talk about blogs they like when they are speaking to friends in the real world (that’’s the offline world, you remember that place right?) so you need to make it easy for them to spread the word and pass on your URL. Try and get a .com if you can and focus on small easy to remember domains rather than worry about having the correct keywords (of course if you can get great keywords and easy to remember then you’ve done a good job!).7. Start commenting on other blogs. Once you have your pillar articles and your daily fresh smaller articles your blog is ready to be exposed to the world. One of the best ways to find the right type of reader for your blog is to comment on other people’s blogs. You should aim to comment on blogs focused on a similar niche topic to yours since the readers there will be more likely to be interested in your blog.Most blog commenting systems allow you to have your name/title linked to your blog when you leave a comment. This is how people find your blog. If you are a prolific commentor and always have something valuable to say then people will be interested to read more of your work and hence click through to visit your blog.6. Trackback and link to other blogs in your blog posts. A trackback is sort of like a blog conversation. When you write a new article to your blog and it links or references another blogger’’s article you can do a trackback to their entry. What this does is leave a truncated summary of your blog post on their blog entry - it’’s sort of like your blog telling someone else’s blog that you wrote an article mentioning them. Trackbacks often appear like comments.This is a good technique because like leaving comments a trackback leaves a link from another blog back to yours for readers to follow, but it also does something very important - it gets the attention of another blogger. The other blogger will likely come and read your post eager to see what you wrote about them. They may then become a loyal reader of yours or at least monitor you and if you are lucky some time down the road they may do a post linking to your blog bringing in more new readers.5. Encourage comments on your own blog. One of the most powerful ways to convince someone to become a loyal reader is to show there are other loyal readers already following your work. If they see people commenting on your blog then they infer that your content must be good since you have readers so they should stick around and see what all the fuss is about. To encourage comments you can simply pose a question in a blog post. Be sure to always respond to comments as well so you can keep the conversation going.4. Submit your latest pillar article to a blog carnival. A blog carnival is a post in a blog that summarizes a collection of articles from many different blogs on a specific topic. The idea is to collect some of the best content on a topic in a given week. Often many other blogs link back to a carnival host and as such the people that have articles featured in the carnival often enjoy a spike in new readers.To find the right blog carnival for your blog, do a search at blogcarnival.com.3. Submit your blog to blogtopsites.com. To be honest this tip is not going to bring in a flood of new readers but it’’s so easy to do and only takes five minutes so it’’s worth the effort. Go to Blog Top Sites, find the appropriate category for your blog and submit it. You have to copy and paste a couple of lines of code on to your blog so you can rank and then sit back and watch the traffic come in. You will probably only get 1-10 incoming readers per day with this technique but over time it can build up as you climb the rankings. It all helps!2. Submit your articles to EzineArticles.com. This is another tip that doesn’t bring in hundreds of new visitors immediately (although it can if you keep doing it) but it’’s worthwhile because you simply leverage what you already have - your pillar articles. Once a week or so take one of your pillar articles and submit it to Ezine Articles. Your article then becomes available to other people who can republish your article on their website or in their newsletter.How you benefit is through what is called your “Resource Box”. You create your own resource box which is like a signature file where you include one to two sentences and link back to your website (or blog in this case). Anyone who publishes your article has to include your resource box so you get incoming links. If someone with a large newsletter publishes your article you can get a lot of new readers at once.1. Write more pillar articles. Everything you do above will help you to find blog readers however all of the techniques I’ve listed only work when you have strong pillars in place. Without them if you do everything above you may bring in readers but they won’t stay or bother to come back. Aim for one solid pillar article per week and by the end of the year you will have a database of over 50 fantastic feature articles that will work hard for you to bring in more and more readers.I hope you enjoyed my list of traffic tips. Everything listed above are techniques I’ve put into place myself for my blogs and have worked for me, however it’’s certainly not a comprehensive list. There are many more things you can do. Finding readers is all about testing to see what works best for you and your audience and I have no doubt if you put your mind to it you will find a balance that works for you.This article was by Yaro Starak, a professional blogger and my blog mentor. He is the leader of the Blog Mastermind mentoring program designed to teach bloggers how to earn a full time income blogging part time.To get more information about Blog Mastermind click this link:www.BlogMastermind.com
Tips on getting traffic to a new blog
Earlier this month blog mastermind Yaro Stark posted a podcast on his site that all wannbe bloggers should check out. The podcast is - How much traffic should a new blog have after months? It is only a half hour and worth a listen. The podcast is with one of his blog mastermind students who managed to grow his blog from a handful of readers a day to thousands a day. It is pretty impressive. For more free info from Yaro, check out this Blog Profits Blueprint report. Click here to download the Blog Profits Blueprint.
The difference between active and passive income
You see a lot of people that are talking about passive income on their blogs. You see a lot of people that do those monthly income reports where they list “passive income” as one of their earners. If you pay attention to those sites you will notice something. Some people make a ton of passive income and some don’t. If you dig a little deeper you will notice that some of those big earners are including active income in their passive income column. But you don’t hear people talking about active income.There is a difference between passive income and active income. Active income is when you are constantly working to create income. For instance, having a blog that you update regularly that brings in money is technically active income. Getting paid to evaluate products on your blog is one-time active income. In its simplest form that is what active income is - you do something one time and you get income one time and there is no opportunity for recurring income from that activity.Passive income is the opposite. Passive income is when you earn income on something over and over that you only had to actively work on once. Passive income is income that tends to be recurring and requires no additional work after the initial output. Blog posts that have some adsense in them that get a lot of traffic is a great source of passive income if you get a lot of traffic and click throughs. Another great example of a passive income earner is an affiliate program. You throw the link up once and people click on it and you earn money until you take it down or until they end their subscription to the affiliate product.
Smorty owes me referral money: An update
As you recall, Smorty owes me money. Again. This time what they owe me is referral income just shy of $5.00. Not a huge sum of money, but it would feed me twice at Taco Bell.
I called Smorty on their shenanigans of withholding my money from me. They tried to put me off. Then they tried to tell me that they only owed my $0.30. Here are the complete emails that I exchanged with those wankers.
Original message I sent on May 20:
Just wondering how long it takes to get paid for referrals. I have referred someone that I know has approved posts yet I have not seen any referral income. Please advise.
Smorty’s reply that day:
Hi XXXmynamehereXXX,Referral money is paid with normal post payments, it is not paid on it’s own. http://blog.smorty.com/2008/03/referall-commissions.html
Smorty
My reply to them:
According to my records, the payments that I have received have only been for actual opportunities that I took. Do you have a detailed payment history showing referral payments for my account? Thanks
Then they reply:
The referral payments will be noticed with an information sign saying “New payment was increased due to commission and reposted missing posts modifiers” and the net part of the payment will be in green.
Smorty
So, I find the info on my account and verify that I have not been paid any referral payments.
Then, I reply:
I have not received any referral payment and my referral says that her payment history shows a 1st payment date of April 1, 2008. Thanks.
They respond:
You will be receiving your referral payment which is $0.30 with your next post payment.
Smorty
Now, I have no outstanding post payments, and they should know this. But still, I forge on.
I reply to Smorty:
Thanks. And when can I expect the remaining $4.41 referral payment?
They respond:
As you can see from the referal Program section from your admin panel, Your past 4 weeks referal earning is $0,30 which will be paid on our next payment cycle which is on a weekly basis, however Smorty do not have a set payment day. The reason for this is because we pay via PayPal mass pay. The transfer of tens of thousands of dollars through PayPal can sometimes vary in time. As soon as your post has been approved, which takes 5 days, we try to pay for that blog article on the first payment day of that week.
Regards
Smorty
So, then I reply:
I am aware that the referral section shows that $0.30 is due to me, however I am also aware that the grand total in referral payments due to me is $4.71 as evidenced from a screencap sent to me by my referral. My referral has taken several tasks which equal a grand total of $94.20 in payments. And the referral 5% would be $4.71. As of today’s date I have received no referral payments whatsoever. Thanks for investigating this matter.
Douchebags.
They then respond:
You will be receiving the referral payment as $4,71 total but it will be in step by step process. Your referral did not receive the payments one at a time. The system makes the payment to the blogger’s post first then to the referral.
Smorty
So, I reply:
Thank you for your help in clearing up this matter. I do hope it is resolved within the next month as my referral received their first payment on April 1, 2008.
Regards.
And that was my last communication with them on May 23, 2008. I can’t wait to see how long it takes to get the $4.71. You would have thought that they would have gotten tired of my emails and just paid me the money that they owe me. What they do not know though is that I want my damn money! I will give them till the end of month before I email them again. And send the info to The Consumerist. People that want to make money online need to know not to waste their time with companies that do not respect them enough to pay them in a timely manner.
Smorty referral FAQ: (click to enlarge)
Money my Smorty referral has earned: (click to enlarge)
The problem with SocialSpark
Not all that long ago I signed up with SocialSpark. I like to get paid to blog about random crap. I also like that all of the links you get for the opps with them are no follow links.
Today I got an email telling me “You have been paid for your post!” and when you open the email it says:
Your post Brand your blog with Zookoda email newsletters has been approved for payout, and your SocialSpark account has been credited. To transfer this money to your PayPal account, please visit the Blogger Payout section on the “Manage My finances” page in SocialSpark.
So, I went to the Social Spark page to do just that. Guess what? It won’t let me cash out. Why?
1 error prohibited this blogger cashout from being saved
There were problems with the following fields:
- Trans amount is Less Than the Minimum of $20.00
Wankers. Thanks for mentioning that there is a minimum amount to get paid for real.
My First AdSense Check
Well, I officially got paid by AdSense. I don’t actually have a check though as it was a direct deposit. However it is still pretty darn exciting. The only sad thing is that this small amount took from October through February to build up. Oh yeah, almost $130. It is not a lot, but at least it did not take me an entire year to get a payout. Now the challenge is on to see how quickly I can get paid again!
Smorty and Blogsvertise paid me…finally
After my complaining, I finally got paid!
Both Smorty and Blogsvertise have paid me. However, I am still awaiting a small referral payment from Smorty.
Even though they have paid up, this gringo plans on staying away from these sites in the future. You see, I could be earning interest on that cash instead of them.
And hopefully, I will get the hang of this affiliate marketing thing and not need to use sites like that any longer!
Blogsvertise and Smorty owe me money
It is hard to make some pesos when people are holding them hostage. Here I was last month looking for new ways to make money. I thought I had found some. Turns out I just found some places that end up owing me money instead of paying me.
Blogsvertise was supposed to pay me on 3/23/08. I have not yet been paid.
And Smorty still has not paid me the $125-ish that they owe me.
Cafe Press payment has arrived
Yesterday I got a check from CafePress in the mail. It was for a whopping $34.60. Most of that income came from Christmas sales. So, technically, that was before I began my journey to one million pesos.
You may be thinking that $34.60 is not a whole lot of money. And you would be right. However, this is totally passive income. Whenever I think of something funny, I open up Photoshop and put it down and then create a freebie Cafe Press shop with the design. So, all in all, the $34.60 is pretty sweet when you realize the lack of work that it took.
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Progress
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Goal: 1,000,000 MXN
Current: 64,288.69 MXN
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The Donation Piñata
Help this gringo out with a little donation!
I'm trying to get to one million pesos by 12/31/08.
As of March 31, I am at 64,288.69 MXN.
For more on my progress, click here. -
The exchange rate
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The goal? 1,000,000 Mexican Pesos.
Current exchange rate as of 4/15/08 is 1.00 MXN = 0.10 USD.
So, 1,000,000 MXN = 95,350.23 USD.
Check out the Currency Converter at XE.com.
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Mexican Flavor of the Moment
Laura Elena Harring
