Bloggin'4money

2006-09-28T14:00:00.000-07:00

Proven facts: The future of internet optimizing is in key phrases not in keywords!

After watching Andy's videos I tried something on one of my web pages from those videos. It was unbelievable. It actually worked!

What have I done? Well first I really do recommend watching all three videos. Why? Because they are talking the right stuff. I’ve red many e-books that tried to explain to me how to earn money, and to be honest, none of them worked. After making one small change that I heard in Andy’s video, I saw results after two days! Yes I did, after two days. I’ve never had such drastic result from any sort of internet marketing or optimizing. And I started to optimize my other web pages with the same technique.

So what have I done? In one of the videos, they explain how to research keywords to use on your site or blog. Inexperienced people usually make mistake and fill their web pages with keywords but without any reasonable meaning or key phrases. Now remember that: the future of internet optimizing is not in keywords but in key phrases! For example let’s say you look information on some dog breed. You probably wouldn’t write dog in search engine, but some phrase like information on Chihuahua breed and if you compare those results they are quite different from each other. And good webmasters know that very well. Now you know also.

If you own a web page, go into your Meta information and replace that bunch of keywords with the right key phrases. It is also important that you really use those phrases on your site, otherwise it is pointless.

Use some specific phrases you are interested in, for example the phrase that is expected to lead to your web page or blog. But there are thousands of sites before yours in search results. Visit first ten of them and view their source. (In IE click on View > Source). You will see how that site is coded. Search for something that start with META NAME="KeyWords" and read what is behind it. Study each one of those first ten pages and try to understand where you make mistakes. What is different on those pages? Which phrases they use?

But there is still the question of seeing the results so fast. At first I didn’t get it, but then I’ve red something and it hit me. But I will explain that later.

2006-09-14T23:12:00.000-07:00

I’m trillioner!!!

Do you get such mails?

The National LotteryUNITED KINGDOM(Customer Services)Ref: LSUK/2031/8161/06Batch: R3/A312-59 September 1st, 2006

WINNING NOTIFICATION: We happily announce to you the draw (2006/1082) of the UK-LOTTO Sweepstake Lottery International programs held on the September 1st, 2006 in LEEDS UNITED-KINGDOM.

Your e-mail address attached to ticket number: 56475600545 188 with Serial number 5368/02 drew the winning numbers:

2 7 11 21 33 24 8,

which subsequently won you the lottery in the 1st category. You have therefore been approved to claim a total sum of Ł1,023,801.00{One Million and Twenty-Three Thousand, Eight hundred and one Great Britain pounds sterlings} in cash credited to file ktu/9023118308/03. All participants were selected randomly from World Wide Web site through computer draw system and extracted from over 100,000 companies. This promotion takes place weekly. Please note that your lucky winning number falls within our European booklet representative office, as indicated in your play coupon. In view of this, your Ł1,023,801.00 {One Million and Twenty-Three Thousand, Eight hundred and one Great Britain pounds sterlings} would be released to you by our payment office. Our claim agent will immediately commence the process to facilitate the release of your funds as soon as you contact him. For security reasons, you are advised to keep your winning information confidential till your claims is processed and you money remitted to you in whatever manner you deem fit to claim your prize. This is part of our precautionary measure to avoid double claiming and unwarranted abuse of this program by some unscrupulous elements. Please be warned. To file for your claim, please contact our Claimagent: /stripped/

I have received hundreds of such mails so I should be trillioner by now. And I'm not, yet. J But to tell you the truth, am tired of such mails. I just can't believe anybody would believe they get the money. I never played Brittish lottery, I don’t even know how it goes. Same thing stand also for Spanish lottery, Italian lottery and so on. So how it is possible for me to get the prize if I didn’t played anything and nobody else played in my name? Something funny is that I get hundreds of such mails on my anonymous mail account. And that is just plain stupid. Any mail that should have any authority should be delivered to personal address and not some found by mail crawlers in some forum.

I must admit, I just love the DELETE button.

2006-09-03T01:54:00.000-07:00

What the heck is Web 2.0?

I was reading some good blogs and lot of them are writing about Web 2.0. At first I didn't get it. I mean how can you go from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0? The Web is not some application that can be replaced by new one. Web is more than application, more than software, more than programmers. The Web is world into itself and although it is connected to our everyday reality, it doesn’t have to be. To tell you the truth, I think we are going into direction Dan Simmons was writing about in his Hyperion saga.

But let us get back to our Web 2.0. What is it? And how it is different from Web 1.0, which was never actually named that way?
The Web 1.0 was used by two kind of people, those who created something for it and those who red that. The great-big-huge companies were paying programmers and web designers to create great sites with useful information which were looked after by people who are browsing the net. And that was it.
Then somebody started to make it little more interactive and user friendly. Very soon everybody could become “The Creator” on the Web and not just "the user". Web sites were no longer reserved for a few that know how to html something. Blogs opened completely new sphere of influence in the web. Thousands of people were putting their own information and their views on that information on the web. But it wasn’t only blogging. There is also Wikipedia, an interactive encyclopedia and was totally different than Britannica. Web designers and programmers went from programming and designing to optimizing for the search engines. Internet became so huge that everything is around search engines. Because it is impossible to remember several web addresses but it is easy to search for something. So companies and their designers are optimizing their pages to get higher and higher position in the search engines.
Web 2.0 is no longer place for looking for information, it is place for sharing everything. Example, I’m using Flock browser and I like it. Why? Well I don’t have to go to Flickr or Imageshack to upload photos but rather I click in my toolbar and voila, photo is uploaded on some server. I don’t even have to bother which server that is. Also if I like some text I found on Internet, I just click right click and choose “Blog this” and write about it.

Now that is Web 2.0! I can write something, make photos, tag something interesting, share files, and I can do that with everybody on the Web.
There have some judging from many people which services are Web 2.0 and which are not. Tim O’Reilly has written good examples how to distinct one from the other. Also people realized that all that Web 2.0 services have one thing in common: they all have logos in lively colors and with some effect in them. That is not new but if you compare then with Web 1.0 logs you can see the difference. So here are some Web 1.0 and here are Web 2.0, and if you want to have such a logo, you can create it here.

I just wonder what will Web 3.0 gonna look like.

2006-08-27T02:42:00.000-07:00

Swarm idea?

Samantha asked: „Why would someone create a site like that?“ or „Why would you possibly want to know this information?“ and she was asking that for Swarm site. Boredom can be the reason for creating the site, but I don't think so. When I saw it I realized immediately that there is huge amount of information that can be used for marketing.

Think about it. That site is collecting the data about your browsing on the web. I’m sure that they save all the data their Firefox extension sends them. So hey get information about users habits. The site is just a cover for the real job.

They analyze the data and they can use it for the marketing. The authors of the site probably have dozens of other sites which can be modified and optimized to become more appealing to the people with specific habits.

The Swarm can also be seen as new way of finding something interesting on the web, but it would be more useful if the statistics about visitors to specific sites are visible. If some site is good there would be lot of visitors, and if other people see that there are lots of visitors, “hm… that must be something good, let’s go and see it”. Even more visitors!

Some people can view it as attack on privacy. But that is not the case. You agreed to give that information from the moment you installed that Firefox extension. So if you don’t want to give them your information, don’t use the extension.

2006-08-24T04:11:00.000-07:00

Banner exchange

Banner exchange is just another way to attract readers. Keep in mind that banners are still the most famous way of advertising your site on other sites. There are many different programs for exchanging banners. You can do it directly with webmaster which is similar to link exchange, or you can join exchange programs.
What does that mean?
You become a member of such program. You enter information about your web site or blog, especially look for category, and you upload your banner. Next step is to Copy/Paste some HTML code which they give you into your web code or blog template. The purpose of that code is to show other people banners on your site. And every time somebody views your site you collect credits. Those credits are used to show your banner on other member’s sites or blogs. If they click they get to your site.

Here is one of such banner exchange programs. It is completely free.

But be aware of something; banner exchange programs are still exchange program. If such program is making most of your traffic it is not good for you if you use Adsense. They consider such programs as frauds.

If you already have steady flow of traffic, such program can give you even more traffic but it will have no major effect on flow of traffic in comparison to traffic generated from search engines.

2006-08-18T02:43:00.000-07:00

Link exchange, Link farm, Trackback, Link baiting

The web is full of articles talking about link exchange. Some say it is good, others say it isn't. There are rare articles which gives you a real explanation about it. I have red lot of articles about that subject and I developed my own opinion about it. So I write it here in the simplest way I can.

1.Hyperlinking is the ground idea of Internet content. You don’t have to search huge amount of pages to find some relevant info but you click on some link and it leads you to the thing you were looking for.

2.Is it good that people link to your blog? Yes it is. The more the better!

3.Is it good to exchange links with as many people possible? NO! Because there is great possibility that some blogs would not write about subjects you write about and those link don’t serve their purpose of getting readers to your blog. People reading their blog are NOT looking for the information you provide. That way you’re just creating link farms.

4.I have several pages. Should I interconnect them with hyperlinks? If all of those pages talk about similar subject than yes. If those pages are too different in subjects than NO, because such links can be recognized as link farms and your blog will get penalized.

Now there is some contradictory statement here. Rule 3 is contradictory to rule 2. Let me explain. Let say you have a blog about motorcycles. You expect readers to be interested in motorcycles, not in candybars or milk industry or whatever. It is recommendable to exchange links sites with similar subjects. Why? People hate being pulled around over the pages they didn’t ask to see. If they wanted info on motorcycles they will search for pages with that info. And if they find one, there is great possibility they will visit another site whose link they find and is about motorcycles also. If there is link for skin disease site who will care about it?
That is also philosophy behind search engine bots. To get higher in search engines you have to be known on internet. You can gat to be known if people link to your site or blog. So in simple way that mean: more links to your page, higher in the search engine. But because lots of Black Hat SEOs are trying everyday to cheat search engines in various ways, people behind search engines are getting angry and they are penalizing every suspicious page. If they discover link farm, they will penalize the page link farm leads to.

How they know if there is a link farm? It is actually really easy to find that out, if you are really good in mathematics. Let say you create a web page, and the subject is everything about trucks. You write for about a month or two and you have written quite a lot of reliable content. But you lack readers. Or you have just few of them. So you read somewhere that link exchange helps you rising PageRank and getting better position in search engines. You start browsing the web for sites that will do a link exchange. You find hundreds and you exchange links with them. So there are now two maybe three hundreds backlinks to you. That is good but are those links relevant to you? Remember that is a link EXCHANGE so you have to linkback to all those pages. And you have just created a link farm! The site where you put all those links is a link farm. And it is useless to the readers. There are probably only 20 or so really relevant links to people interested in trucks. Other links are about things that are not related to trucks in any way.

Let us go now in the search engine company. Search bot just found your page before all those backlinks. You have let say three relevant links back. Good, that is a new page with relevant info and potential growth. They suddenly one month later search bot registers 300 links to your page and they all happened in a few days. You either have something really good at your page or you created a link farm. But those bots are intelligent. They can see if those links are connected to a specific and important thing (trackback) or if there is just a huge pile of links. If they find just a pile of links, they delete that site from their search listing. And what is the result. Few hours of your surfing and exchanging links have just destroyed two months of real work.

That is where trackbacking and link baiting come into play. Number of links still have impact on popularity of your webpage or blog. So how to do it without being suspicious? Trackbacking is when people link to a specific post or specific part of post on your blog. Each post you create has a permalink. So if people find one of your article funny or interesting they use that permalink to link to that post and not to your blog directly. They are not showing others your blog but rather that one good post. Readers themselves will decide if they want to read the rest of the posts. When you write some great post, and people start linking to it that post is called linkbait. It is perfectly natural that now and then you write something really interesting, and if it is really good you start chain reaction. Some bloggers were lucky and managed to get thousands of trackbacks for one post, making their blog really popular in search engines. You can see the importance of link baiting and trackbacking. You cannot be penalized if people wanted to link to your post and they didn’t ask you to link back to their blogs.

But even link baiting is starting to create problems for search engines. There are always some Black Hat SEOs trying to use every single thing to make their site more popular. So they do a research in what people like to link to, and they start to write exactly that kind of articles. And those articles are usually artificial and not personal but because people link to them they take up best positions in search engines and you don’t even manage to see really good articles. Here are the basic rules for creating a link bait:

News – be first to write about something

Controversy – write about something very popular in some other point of view (but careful with that one)

Resources – find really interesting and usefull stuff and write article about them

Humor – write something really funny, that can be a difficult one

I think you get the picture. So stop with careless link exchange and concentrate on writing the right stuff. People will link to you if you are interesting.

2006-08-15T10:40:00.000-07:00

How to attract readers to your blog?

First and the utmost rule to understand is this: Your blog is not an individual website! Well, you can consider it a website if you use your own hosting and not some free one, but if you write it as a blog it is blog then, not a website.

What is the difference? Websites are usually written in non-personal tone, while correct blog is written in personal tone. That is why it is called a blog, from web log, or online diary. Although there are many people trying to cheat search engines with various methods to get readers, they usually race with time. Companies such as Google or Yahoo are working constantly to remove such “cheaters” blog from their listing.

Some people think that usual online diary will not make you successful online business. Why is that? Because they differentiate personal diaries from so called targeted blogs. Personal diary is considered as “real” diary written by somebody, and unless that person is celebrity, or politician or somebody near celebrities, you will have readers but they will not make you money. Readers of personal diaries are usually people that write similar online diaries. And there are millions of them. None of those diaries have ads on them, 95% of them doesn’t even try to monitor how many visitors they have or what they were looking for. Those people just ignore ads and if you get then as readers here would not be any great profit maybe something small. Targeted blogging on the other hand can make huge money. Such blog can be considered as diaries but they are diaries with a cause and purpose. Blog of a company worker writing about problems he encountered with a new company project is such a blog. Why? People who read that are interested in that subject. Maybe they have similar problems. And if writer offers solutions in links leading to other blogs, articles or products then that is targeted blogging. And each reader can make you profit.

As I written before, your post must be written in personal tone but must also be relevant in the subject you are writing about. Let say you write about motorcycles (I keep mentioning them as example, I need to buy one) and you want to buy one. You already know a lot about motorcycles or you would not write about them. So show that knowledge in choosing a bike for you and write it down. Take a pencil and paper with you when you go after the bike. You went to one shop, saw several bikes from Yamaha, Suzuki, Harley-Davidson… Write your impressions on the paper as you look at them. Are they too expensive? Is there are some special offer goin’ on? You weren’t satisfied with the offer of that shop, go to another. And do the same thing, write everything down. Do not think about writing it in blog, just write your thoughts about those bikes on the paper. After visiting four or five shops you bought a bike.

Now sit in front of computer. Pull out that paper and start writing a blog about buying a motorcycle. Don’t worry if it is too long. Expand those thoughts you have written on the paper for each shop you visited. Write why haven’t you bought it in the first shop? Or if you did, why you returned? Explain in details. You are the expert. You know why you bought it! Was it a price? Special offer? Cheap maintenance? What was the reason?

That kind of article is what are people looking for! Advices from people who tried it and are not paid to say something is good. You do not advertise shop you bought motorcycle at. You are just writing the reasons why you chose the bike you chose.

Somewhat later, after your article got indexed you can expect comments on that shopping. Some of the people will agree with you, some will be thankful for extensive advice, and some will not agree with and they will tell some other bike is better. Whatever they wrote is good for you. If your article is good and honest, there could be hundreds of comments and other bloggers will link to it, meaning more potential readers. In the end – more profit.

So here are few basic rules for attracting readers:

Be extensive in your writing.
Be honest in your opinions (but careful to avoid being sued)
Write continuously. If your trouble of buying motorcycle lasts more than a day, write each day as separate blog entry.
Make links to relevant sites which you used for your own research. Share your knowledge with people who read.

Do not think these rules apply only for blogs about motorcycles. You can use that kind of writing in any subject. How to find some rare CD? How to buy great shoes really cheap and when to do it? How to design a web page? How to take care of some exotic pet?

There are hundreds of potential subjects to write about, but you MUST chose the one you know something about. People are not stupid, they realize very soon if you write about something you don’t know anything about.

2006-08-08T04:05:00.000-07:00

How to remove Edit-me link? Step-by-step

1. Login into your Blogger account.

2. Click Change settings

3. Click Template

4. Click with cursor somewhere on empty space in the middle area. Where you see that coding stuff.

5. Scroll down, slowly because CTRL+F doesn't work here, until you find something like this:

6. Select with cursor those two lines with I marked with red lines.

7. Delete them.

8. Click bellow on Save Template Changes.

9. Republish your blog.

And there is no more stupid, nowhere leading links. If you want to replace them with other links, that is somewhat harder be doable.
Instead of deleting them replace Edit-me text with the name of the link you want to place here. Copy the link you want, I mean that http://... something. Select with cursor this part http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=110 not the quotes, just the link and Paste your own. Save template changes and Republish.
And voila, there is your link.

2006-08-07T10:14:00.000-07:00

Choosing design for Adsense

Maybe the greatest mistake in choosing Adsense design is that people tend to stay with the default design. That is just plain wrong! Let us say that I'm working on page which has green-black combination in layout. And I even make it really good looking. With dark-red links, grey auxiliary text. Fixed soft background image. I made it great, and then I place default looking Adsense with blue borders, blue links for clicking and green links of the site which is advertised, black text, white background. Horror. Would you click on it? It is looking so nice as shit on white paper. Pardon the expression. It is painful for the eyes. You would never click on it, even if there is an ad you just have to see. You will not even read what is written is such ads, even if you are looking for exactly that information.

But if Adsense is softly merged with page layout. Colored the same as every single aspect of your page, than people will click on them. If your links are red, links in Adsense must be red. If your text is green, than Adsense ext must be green. And DO NOT USE borders! Many bloggers make that mistake. They leave borders. That is good in only one case: when your page is designed in cells or blocks and each cell/block have borders, than your Adsense ads will not look suspicious with borders. Otherwise borders around ads are the same as if you draw a giant finger pointing in the ads and somebody is saying: “Ads are here! Do not click on them!” Think a little. What do you hate when you read another blogs or webpages? Most of the people hate that famous 468x60 ads with flashy animated effects. Why? Because they usually do not fit into page where they are displayed. Years of seeing such banners have made people avoid them moment they see them. You avoid them, you do not want to look at them, same is for your readers. Only ads they WANT to see are those that do not distract them from reading your story, and are related to the subject they are reading at the moment. So be very careful in choosing color for your ads. If you know something about html check your color codes in the template of the blog. Specifically look for these a:link (you will place that code in the link color) body…background (you will place that into background and border color) body…color(you will place that into text color) because these are main color of your template. Of course, if you have layout with several elements of different backgrounds you must fit your Adsense into layout of each element.

But be aware of something! These are not advices to hide those ads! You are not allowed to do that. People have the right to see that what they click are ads. But you are allowed to fit them to your web design. Here are some great examples of god choices in Adsense designing: here, here, here or here. I didn’t want to place links for awful design examples because you can find then really easily.

And once more, please remove these Edit-me links from your template.

2006-07-31T00:10:00.000-07:00

How do people look at your website?

I the next several posts I will explain some things about Adsense. And latter we will discuss Affiliate marketing.

The big question is: Where to place ads from Adsense? And this is very important because you want maximum result from them. You want as many readers as possible to see them. And to turn those readers to customers.

To know how to answer that, you just must know how your readers look at your page. What they look at first, and how do they proceed to the entire page. There had been several researches on that because the fact how people look at the website is extremely important. Both for advertisers and writers. Why is it important? Because if you know the spot where most of the people look at you will put an ad in that spot. It is as simple as that! Here are examples on eyetracking on people looking at some websites. Pictures are from Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox who discuss in details how people look at the website. Red color represents the spot look at the most. Yellow spots follow after, and blue are the least viewed places. As you can see there are some grey areas. None of the subject looked at those places. That is very important to know. You do not place ads in those places! Please take few minutes and look at those images very carefully.

Now when you have looked at them and created some of your conclusions, go here and see how Google advises you to place those ads. Have in mind that they have real experts in that field. Ad they know what they are talking about.

As you can see their advices are compliant to the research on how people look at web pages. The areas marked as red in Google advices is the same as in these images. So I don’t need to tell you again, but I will: Place your Adsense ads as they are shown in that image.

And one more thing; it is proven that horizontal ads have better result than vertical one.

2006-07-29T07:09:00.000-07:00

Adsense or Affiliate marketing

You started a blog. Have you posted several posts? Haven't? Do it! Now! Why? I already told in previous posts that I do not recommend placing the ads immediately upon starting of your blog. Now I will explain why I said that.
Maybe you already decided to use Adsense or Yahoo ads, or any other content based advertising, or even Affiliate marketing. But you probably haven't check entirely their terms of use and you probably did some mistakes. Before you place ads you have a chance to correct those mistakes. I will write about them later.
Now let us discuss ads you will place on your blog.
Content based marketing. As the name say those are ads that are changing to adapt to the content you are writing about. If you are writing about coffee, ads on your blog will be from coffee producers or companies making products from coffee. These ads are great. Because people reading your text are reading it because they are interested in coffee. There is great possibility they will want to find out more about it and they will click on the ad of some interesting company. And there is profit for you. You can choose whatever content based ads you want. I personally use Adsense and I'm satisfied with them. But I must warn you! You cannot place more than one type of content based advertising. That means that you cannot use Yahoo Ads and Adsense on the same site. I suspect you have already written few posts before placing ads on your blog. It is good to have few post before because algorithms checking for content have something to check out and ads will immediately be adapted to the content. If you don't have any posts, you will probably just get some ads for charity organizations.
Affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is another way of making money from blogging. First requirement is that you become a member of some affiliate network, like Linkshare or Clickbank. When you became a member browse through listing of companies and search for those which offer products you are writing about. There would some difference in your writing if you choose affiliate marketing. If you really want that people buy something from the companies whose ads you have, you must implement their products in your texts. And be familiar with them. That can be done easily if you choose the right companies to advertise. Example: you are writing about computers and laptops, then chose companies whose ads and offers can be included in your posts. You can even compare prices between companies in your posts, but make sure you stand on the side of the company whose ads you have on your blog. I also expect you have several posts already before placing such ads. Why? Because some companies first check websites where you will place their ads. And they have certain standards, if your site is empty and do not look professional enough, they will reject your site from affiliate request.
Can I combine Content based with Affiliate marketing? Yes you can. It is actually recommendable to do so. Because there is much greater chance of profit.

2006-07-28T12:20:00.000-07:00

Choosing a good name for blog

You have decided what you will write about. You have chosen the blog tool you will use. Now is the time to choose the good name for the blog. How to do that?

First: Write down the subject you will write about in one sentence.

Second: Write down every single word that come to your mind and is related to the subject you will write about.

Third: Look at all of them and find one which is short and sticky.

Fourth: Check with yourself if this is the right word. Example, you will write about motorcycles. The first word that comes to my mind about motorcycles is TORQUE. So let us try if it is available with our blog provider. So we will try torque.blogdomain.com, and it is available. GREAT! Make sure your blog name and your link are the same. The fact that behind the blog name come blogdomain name is not important. What if it is not available but the word you selected is really sticky. Don't give up on it! You never have to do that! Try to combine it with other words or number. Example „Torque5“. And latter you add same great image with speed affect on it behind number 5. Or even better „Torque Expert“, because that what you are, and even if you are not in few months of researching materials for your writing you will become one. Now you check it up. Let us say that torquexpert.blogdomain.com is available. Don't register it yet. Wait, it will not run away!

Fifth: Domain I want is not available, but if I put dash than it is available. Should I do that? I don't recommend it. Why? For some reason people are less inclined to trust pages with dash in their link. Because it reminds them of huge number of spam and adware and spyware pages they hate so much. If you really must have that name with dash, I cannot stop you, but I would rather combine it in some other phrase or with some number. Sometimes phrases can be better than single word. Here is good example www.campaignforrealbeauty.com

Sixth: Will this name have effect on my writing? Am I free to write in a way to be behind that name? Good and sticky names usually make people expect certain quality. When you say BMW, everybody knows what kind of car is that. And if you have seen such car only once, you will remember the name. That is why when such companies make mistake it is perceived as much bigger than it really is. So be prepared to give readers certain quality to support the name you have chosen.

Seventh: Register the name.

Eight: Write About us part. Users tend to check who is writing something if they like it first time. Write why you do this, except telling them you are doing it for money. I mean don't write sentences like this: „I'm writing this blog because I want to earn money with it.“ It is just plain stupid to do such thing. People are not stupid! They will figure it out without you pointing it out with finger. They will see the ads and they would understand. You should concentrate rather on sentences why you chose the subject you are writing about, or just write something personal about yourself.

Ninth: Start writing your first post. Write about thing you know the most of. What does that mean? Let us say you chose to write about motorcycles (I just love them, so I keep mentioning them), and specifically you know everything about engine. Then write about engine. Don't write about wheels. You can do that later. And write it as you are talking to somebody. It is much easier that explaining something in technical manner. Imagine there is kid near you and is very interested in motorcycle engines but knows nothing about them. Start from the begging. Have in mind that lot of your future readers will read your articles because they know nothing about it but they want to know something.

2006-07-28T02:48:00.000-07:00

Starting a blog

So you decided to write a blog a try to earn money with it. Let us get step by step what you need to do at the very start:

1. What would be the theme of your blog? Would it be personal? Scientific? Technical? Journalistic? Or what? – Why is this important? Because it is the thing to attract your readers. The theme you select will predetermine what sort of readers you are going to attract to your blog. Example: if you are going to write about small flickering images, you will probably attract teenagers which are not good buyers and probably won’t click on your ads. But if you are writing about cars and how to fix them, you will attract only people who are very interested in subject. There would not be many of them at the start, but they would probably keep coming back if you know what you are talking about. And such readers are likely to use services of companies whose ads you have on your blog.
2. You selected a subject to write about. Now you must choose a blog tool to do it with. There are hundreds of them. Some are local for their country like www.blog.hr for Croatia, and some are international like www.blogger.com or www.bloglines.com , you just need to check if they allow placing ads on their blog. Blogger does, actually they are promoting it and they expect from you to do it.
3. Design of your blog? Now that can be really hard to choose! Let say you have chosen Blogger as your tool (just so I can explain it easily enough). As you create your blog they offer you several predefined templates. Some of them are quite good. But does they fit to your vision of your blog? Do you know to work with HTML? Then write your own code for the blog design! You don’t know o work with HTML? Don’t worry, there are plenty of people who would do it for you. And for free! This blog here is designed by Thur Broeders, but there are plenty other designers to look from like Blogger-templates, Ravasthi, Isnaini, Blogplates, Blogskins, Ehsany, EyeForBeauty, Point Of Focus, Shellen and many more. But how to chose the right one? Very often me and my colleagues are reviewing some web sites and are commenting how were they done. So we started to divide people into 4 basic groups, considering how are their web pages designed. Designers, coders, writers and advertisers.
Designers are people who care only how their page or blog look like. They will use anything to improve the look of their site. That can include Flash, Java scripts, huge images for backgrounds, animated links, and so on. Some of those pages really look good but most of the people do not come to a web page just because it looks good. There must be some relevant content for them to read or look at. Also, such pages tend to be very slow because there is huge amount of data to be downloaded before you can see the entire page.
Coders are complete opposite. They couldn’t care less how the site look like. Usually some professors in some colleges have such sites. Those pages are always W3 compliant. Very simple in design and they load extremely fast, even on modems. Because people who created them want that. They create pages which are opposite of what they don’t like: slow and filled with “crap”.
Writers are people who give most attention to the content of page. Everything else must be sacrificed for that. If the content is text, then it must be clear and easy to read, and there should not be anything to distract the reader away from the text. If it is some animation or clip, it should be wide enough so people can look at it without their glasses on. Such pages are great sometimes, but tend to boring, especially if they are writing about some scientific or technical subject. They usually lack additional material to enhance the main content like graphs on the right place, or some blueprint or something.
Advertisers are people who advertise everything and anything. They don’t care how would a page look like, or if there is 100 or 10000 words in the article. Ads must be seen, and they must be seen before anything else. That mean they will optimize they pages in such a way that ads are loaded first and you will as a fact see them before the text you were looking for. They don’t how does the desing of the page look to you because you have already seen the ads. The second thing they are worried about is your impression of the site. There are two rules. First: The site must be so good you will talk about it for the whole year. Second: The site must be so ugly and bad you will never forget it, and you will tell everybody else how the site was ugly, and everybody else would want to see it.
Which one of those four are you? You don’t know? Well let us analyze me and this site. I’m combination of a writer and a coder. I chose this template because it is really simple and will not distract you from reading my text. Every web site I’ve been working on had one imperative: to load fast no matter what. Because some people tend to leave if only thing they can see is the name of the site.
So think what you want from your blog and chose your template accordingly. Don’t forget the very first thing above: What is the subject of your blog? It is important to choose template to go with that subject. If you are writing about cars, don’t choose template with small flowers on it. And my recommendation is to use some template with three columns. Even if you haven’t anything to put in all three columns, you will have it later and you will be grateful for three columns.
4. DO NOT place ads yet. Even if you have them.
5. Start writing your blog. For a few days. Create several posts so you will see if you know enough about the subject you have chosen to write about it for several months at least. Become familiar with your blog. Don’t rush into it. Not one blogger has managed to live of a blog from the start. You have to develop it to get readers.
6. Remove those Edit-me links. If you don’t know how to put other links instead just delete them. Go to your blog settings -> Template. Scroll until you find

something > Edit-Me<>

Delete only those two lines. Click “Save Template Changes” and Republish your blog.

2006-07-27T09:37:00.000-07:00

Blogging for money

Can I monetize my blog? How to earn money on Internet? How to earn money on the Web? How to make money on the Internet? How to earn money surfing the Web and reading e-mails? Is it really possible to earn money with writing a blog?

These and similar, are questions friends and colleagues ask me every day. At least twice a day I have to explain to somebody how it is done. Well I am sick of telling the same thing every day. So I told them to look it up on Internet. But they were too lazy to find it for themselves. So they managed to make me write it. Now each time somebody ask me something I will give them address of this blog so he/she would not need to search for it.

So to answer some of those questions above:

Can I monetize my blog? Yes you can. It is actually quite easy. Start using Google Adsense or some affiliate marketing on your blog and you will slowly get steady income from your blog. It could be really slow at the beginning but after you get some readers, it can become quite an amount.

How to earn money on Internet? There are several ways. Blogging, making surveys, selling things, promoting other things, sending mails (often considered as spamming), reading mails, etc. Choose whatever you like the most.

How to earn money on the Web? Same as above.

Is it really possible to earn money with writing a blog? YES it is possible. Even if it hard to believe, it is possible. And you can make large sums of money if you give it a lot of work. The best example for that is Problogger. He reached 15849.60$ in a month!

I suppose you are reading this because you want to earn money from Internet. And I am telling it can be done. But I am also telling you it is not easy. Earning money on Internet can also be considered as hard work because it is hard work. And you must look after many things. But you don’t need to look after them at the same time.

So have a little patience. Go step by step and you could build a financial empire online.

Now stop reading and get yourself a web page or start a blog if you haven’t already.