Best Ways to Market Your Website

As you may know from reading this blog and others building your own website can be one of the most profitable ways to make money on the internet. The thing is that to make any money from that website you will need to have some visitors. As a rule in the world of internet business the more visitors you get the more customers you will have and as a result the more money you will make. So in this post I am going to tell you the top ten ways to advertise your website or blog starting with…

1. Search engine optimization

This I consider to be the most important method of advertising your website that there is, as well as one of the most time consuming. This is the process of making your website appear higher in the search engine results for certain keywords that web browsers use to find what they are looking for. To advertise effectively using SEO you will need to build backlinks to your site.
There are several different factors which contribute to SEO including on site optimization. This involves putting the words you want to rank well for on your website in good quantities and in the right places like near the top and the bottom of the page. On page optimization isn’t what really matters though, it is off page optimization where you are really going to see results. Off page optimization mostly involves getting backlinks to your site from other sites or what I like to call ‘votes’. The more votes you get the better. The best type of backlink has the keywords you want to rank well for in the anchor text, in the description of your website and in the content of the website which the link is on. Also you want the backlink to come from a website with a high google page rank.

2. Article marketing

You can use article marketing to great effect when advertising your website because it will bring you a highly targeted audience for your product or service. When you write an article you get the benefits of being able to make sure that a reader is interested in the topic of your website before they decide to click through which makes them more likely to purchase whatever you have to offer. Also you get the added benefit of having a high page rank backlink to your website in which you get to choose what the anchor text says. Some of the websites like ezinearticles.com have a page rank of 6 so it is a heavy duty backlink.

3. Social networking

Social networking is how a lot of companies online are choosing to do a lot of advertising and understandably so. When you use the sites like Facebook, Twitter, Myspace etc you can hit the jackpot by your content going viral. This means that if people like your content or product then they will tell all their friends which essentially means that they are doing your advertising for you for nothing. These websites are some of the biggest on the internet and Facebook alone is the second most high traffic site on the internet and has a page rank of 10.

4. Video marketing

This is the process of making videos about your website or product and then putting them on video websites like Youtube and Daily Motion and then put your tag line at the end of the video. This method of advertising is the best way to appeal to people on a visual level and no other form of free marketing can do this quite in the same way. Your customers get to see your product in action or get to see the end result of the service and this can be the perfect motivator. I would recommend submitting each video you make to every video submission site you can find.

5. Adwords

The only paid advertising service I am going to mention in this post, Adwords is a service provided by Google in which you can put your website up on the side of the famous search engine or on relevant websites. The thing about this service is that it is probably the best way to get targeted traffic. You can create a high probability that the customer wants to buy your product before they click on the advert and you only have to pay when they click on the advert. The downside to this is that because of the highly targeted traffic that you get with no SEO you have to pay a premium. For very high traffic keywords you will have to pay up to $20 or more. You can however still get a bargain on long tailed keywords and clicks can cost you as little as 5 cents.

6. Directory submission

Possibly the easiest way to advertise online is directory submission. All you have to do for this is to go to as many web directories as possible and submit your site to them. I’ll admit that the traffic from directory submission sites is not good and mostly non existent but it will give you a nice solid backlink to help you with your SEO efforts. A word of advice though, don’t bother paying for directory submission because the traffic from them isn’t very good and there is someone else on the internet who will give you the same service for free.

7. Guest posting

When you guest post on blogs you get the advantage of getting an audience that is interested in the topics which you are writing about and you get a nice link on a relevant site. This can give you a nice little traffic spike but i think most importantly you make a contact in the blogging community. If you do this well you can work together on future projects and guest post on each others blogs often and do reviews on each others products. The possibilities of guest posting go well beyond the initial traffic spike.

8. Link exchanges

Using this method you can get relevant links back to your site and you generally get to choose the anchor text and description. The way to going about doing a link exchange is to send emails to web masters with similar websites to your own and asking them to put a link on their website if you put a link to theirs on yours. This can be a very laborious process but the results can be rewarding if you get a reciprocal link you should get some extra traffic and better SEO.

9. E-mail Marketing

Sometimes known as list building email marketing helps to guarantee as best you can that the people you are advertising to are interested in the products you have to offer. The way you get email addresses is to ask people to sign up for your emailing list. This is usually done by offering them something for free in exchange like a newsletter or e book. When you have their email you should begin by sending them emails which give them true value and good content and then start recommending good products over time. If you do offer good products and sell them well you are likely to have a lot of buyers.

10. Forum Posting

Forum posting it is very similar to blogging, you post information which is useful to the person who posted the original query. In this way you can show people that you know what you are talking about and this will hopefully convince them to visit your website through the link that they let you put at the bottom of the post. This targeted traffic is good and there are many popular forums out there discussing so many things. If you get involved in the community you might just learn a few things yourself.

Blogging for Profit

Having a blog can be useful and interesting. You can share your opinions, ideas or comments about something that interest you. But besides that, you could also get benefits and earn from your blog. How could that be? Simple! If you don't have any idea on how to make money on the blog, please consider using this idea to your blog.

Earn Money with Advertisements

Earning money through Advertisements from Ad networks would surely be a good choice to profit from your blog, You could try to register your site on the biggest Ad network by Google;Google Adsense. or other certified and high earning networks like Adbrite, Clicksor andChitika.

You could earn money every time your visitor clicks the ad. and that means, if you have a lot of visitors or readers on your blog, then you have more chances of somebody clicking your ads.

Earn Money through Affiliate Marketing

Do you someone who have products that might work very well if you introduce it on your blog? Or do you want to share some reviews and comments about your favorite products on your blog? Then Affiliate Marketing would suit you best! 

Affiliate programs are another great way to earn money from blog. You just provide the link to your affiliate market, and let your visitor click. Your visitor will be linked to affiliate web, and if they follow the instruction or even purchase the product, you earn money.

Earn money with a Business Blog

Blog as journal or diary, also could be used as a business promotion tool. If you own a product or if you offer services, Then having a blog about your business would be best for you! 

You can sell and promote your product or service with your blog, And the best part is, you will have loyal readers that can turn into your loyal customers.

If it make sense for you to earn and profit from your blog, Then you can try one of  them or to combine all of them. You can choose and try how you would monetize your site and to see if you can earn money with that technique from your blog blog.

You! How would you profit from your blog? Share your views on comments below (It also works to comment as it will increase your traffic remember "Increase Traffic Through Comments" article?)

Increase blog traffic through comments

Your blog is useless if there’s nobody reading your blog posts. You will just be wasting your time doing research or writing and spinning articles if you have a low traffic blog site. It is not easy to establish traffic, especially if you are still in an early stage of creating and building up your blog. 

However, if you know the effective ways to promote your blog, then it’s positive that you’ll be able to gather enough people to view your contents and at the same time comment on them. On the other hand, you may also find niches that are similar as yours and comment on the articles.

You might find leaving comments in blogs that have the same line like the one that you have very effective. When you leave a comment on other blogsand once you’ve caught the attention of other bloggers, you will surely get linked. With this, you will gain a natural back link, which is what search engines usually prioritize in their rankings.

After you have saturated enough viewers, it is already time for you to relax and you do not need to leave comments as often as when you were still starting, but make sure that you have other strategies to maintain the regular visitors in your blog. One of the strategies includes the use of social networking sites. 

For those who are just starting as a blogger, expect things to be difficult. You may not immediately attract the number of visitors that you need. Honestly speaking, some even took a year before they were able to establish enough traffic. 

That is why you need to exert more effort and be more aggressive. Just like any traditional or offline business, you’ve got to have guts to in order for you to lure traffic to your blog. Without it, you will not succeed as a blogger. 

A blogger has the same functions as a manufacturer. If they both will not promote their product, obviously, they will not generate any sales. Even if they have created a masterpiece, but they’re not pushing it, then nobody will ever get to notice it. But if the product is properly promoted, they will surely gain exposure and, of course, profit. 

Probably the best strategy in attracting a huge traffic to your site is leaving comments in the blogs of other bloggers, which tackles the same subject matter as yours. This is already a proven strategy.

The fundamentals of increasing your blog's SEO

Search engine optimization, just thinking of it pops a lot of things for you to do like getting backlinks, keyword mashing, on page SEO, off page SEO, etc..It's like a never ending task just to achieve the position you've always wanted for your blog on search engines.

But going back to the basics, have you done the foundation of your site's SEO? Many forgot to lay out their blog's SEO foundation and get directly to more complex ones and in turn it gives bad results. Search engine optimization might be a difficult task but as you break it down into "simple to do" steps, You'll get far more better results! And that's what we are going to learn in this post.

The list below is a basic checklist and breakdown of  complex SEO techniques:

Get your site listed on search engines

Duh, What's the use of search engine optimizing your site if you have even forgot to list the site on search engines? It might be funny but a lot of people tend to forgot that thing, I hope it's not on your case.

Get listed on site directories

Yep! Get your site listed on directories as it will improve the backlinks your site has. One of the most noted directory is the DMOZ.org directory, A lot of search engines depends on the data or the sites that is listed to DMOZ, It's like submitting your site to if not hundreds then thousands of directories at once!

If you want to niche target the backlinks you want to get for your site such as a blog site, You should get your site listed on Blogging directories as it will greatly increase the exposure you will get on your site. Why not list your site on "The Center Of The Blogosphere" now?

Check up and Clean up your links

It's best to check up all the links on your site as a "broken link" leads to a discredit on search engines especially on Google. To check up your sites broken links, you can try to go to W3C Link Checker and see if there's a missing link on your site.

Make relevant file names

Naming an image like "blogtiplogo.jpg" is way much better than a name "10293_fg.jpg", This is somewhat new but search engine spiders logs up all the texts you have on your site including the file names that your site page has. Try to make them more relevant to your content for a better result.

Putting the Title tag

If you have a lot of images on your blog or site, It's a blast to put title to each images that should be relevant to your site's content. To put an image title just put the "Title="title here"" tag.

Ex: <img src="blogtopsite.com/images/blogtiplogo.jpg" Title="title here" /> and you should have a far more better images to feed search engine spiders.

Accompanying Images with the Alt Tag

An alt tag can also be associated to your images, Alt tags replaces an image when it is unable to load and therefore, Alt tags works like hidden keywords on your site. Putting alt tags is similar to putting title tags.

ex: <img src="blogtopsite.com/images/blogtiplogo.jpg" Title="title here" alt="keyword here" />

Submit a site map

Submitting a sitemap to search engines works well if you want to optimize your site for search engines, It's like giving search engine spiders a map of your site and in turn, they cached up your site more faster and more regularly. You can submit a sitemap on google on Google Webmaster Tools.

Stick your site on comments

Yes, You should stick your site's URL on the comments you leave on every blog or site. Not in a way that blog owners mark your comment as a spam. Try to indulge on the Blogosphere and it will surely increase the backlinks for your site. If your interested on getting traffic from commenting then you should try to read the post "Increase Traffic Through Comments".

And there you have it! The things listed above are the most basic things you should do for your blog if you want to increase it's search engine rank. Try not to get confused to jumped into going to more advance techniques leaving behind the foundation.

Why Do We Blog?

Did you ever ask yourself, why do you blog, or why do you have to? Nowadays on Internet there are more than 70 millions blogs, and it is interesting what purposes do they pursue?

Until recently, to make money online was not easy for usual people like we. 4-5 years ago it was difficult to earn something on the Net until WEB 2.0 era had came. The only way which could help us in that time was website creating, it’s promotion, and selling of advertising places.

Today everything changed. Blog fever amplifies day by day, and everyone, who heard something about blogs, wants to have it. So, why? Lets try to make some supervisions.

1. Glory. The vanity was, is and will be always. Whether is necessary to be surprised that people wish to be famous? Look at how many amazing people did you know since you have enjoyed blogging. Seth Godin, Steve Pavlina, Darren Rowse… Did you ever know them if not blogs?

2. Self-expression. Many people are blogging because it gives them some charge of energy. I created this blog because I just want to share of my thoughts… Why not? And there are guys, who are the professionals in different spheres, but they don’t have another opportunities of expression. Internet is the best instrument for people like us.

Internet is not developed even on a half and I do not exclude such opportunity, that people will become famous all over again online and only after, in real life. Blogging is what such people need.

3. Job. For many, blogging is a real time job. Companies are hire people to write about their new products and its announcement. Like I wrote in my post Occupation Bloggger, the middle salary of such blogger in US is equal $2,5-3 thousands per month.

4. Sale of own products. Through Internet, we can start selling our products worldwide from the minutes after beginning. Especially if we have an electronic product like eBook or useful software, Internet is the best that we can use. And people use it. Blog helps to realize these purposes.

5. Sale of affiliate products. Recently, are appeared the new techniques, which help anyone to sell affiliate products with help of blog. Check this out.

6. To Help Another. Yes, yes, yes… And why not? I found many blogs of family doctors, radio engineering and even workers of the zoo which are writing about what should we do in different situations.

7. Money Making Online. And eventually people are blogging for the sake of money. Look at John Chow, if to be honest, I’m not against that my blog brings me $18,000. But while I have no such purposes. And John is not alone. For many people blog is a big business. I read somewhere, that Engadget make more than $100,000 per month. You're probably agree with me, that these people don’t have any financial problems. :)

Everyone of us have different views, but the are all the same, because blogging join us. Let’s create blogs, promote them and enjoy this process, because it gives us a big opportunities in our lives.

Making Your Blog Work

Many blogs are being created every day, it’s a mystery to many bloggers how to make their blog stand out from the rest. but It’s simple, People want to read good content, and with good content comes ad revenue. Well, maybe it’s not that easy…

These tips below should benefit your blog and make it more user-friendly, more easily accessible, and more content-enabled.

There are many types of blogs or purposes for blogs and a certain number of tactics are applicable to just about all of them, so here is a -short- list of tips for marketing and optimizing a blog:

 STEPS

-Use your own domain name! Having your own domain gives your blog a more brandable effect, It makes it easier for you to stand out from the rest of the blogs, Consider which is better: myblog.com or myblog.blogspot.com?

-Customize how your blog looks and fee, even a simple image header will make it work.

-Research keywords! Try to know what keywords suits best for your blog and then apply it on your blog, this is to make it more easier to find on search engines

-Ping your blog! you can use free blog pinging online tool such as pingomatic.com and pingcoat.com to ping your blog. This is to let search engines know that you have just updated your blog.

-Create Feedburner account and make a feed for your blog, this helps to build your blog's readership as many people want to read a doze of every bits when your blog is updated or when you post something on your blog.

-Setup Google acount for Sitemap, validate and prep for future submission. Sitemaps let search engines know how your blog is connected and thus improving your rankings on search engines

-Identify authoritative blogs, web sites and hubs for outbound resource links and blogroll. These are the blogs that are famous and have a lot of readers, Be part of that blog's community and then afterward, try to "show off" your blog to the readers.

-Format archived posts, related posts. Display your old blog posts on your homepage or any page, this is to help new blog readers dig to all of your blog posts

-Enable statistics for tracking especially Google Analytics. It tracks your blog visitors and make a data analysis of your blog's readers, and thus being able to know this data will help you on improving your blog.

-Submit RSS feed and Blog URL to prominent RSS and Blog directories / search engines. Submit on Blogtopsites blog directory now. It will help you get your blog discovered by other bloggers as well 

-Optimize and distribute a press release announcing blog. Search for blogs or websites that welcomes free or paid press release for your blog posts.

-Request feedback or reviews of your blog in relevant forums, discussion threads. If you have a resourceful post that will help others, point to it.

-Research and comment on relevant niche related blogs and blogs with significant centers of influence. But be sure to comment as a human not like a robot!

-Post regularly. If it’s a news oriented blog, 3-5 times per day. If it’s an authoritative blog, 3-5 times per week, but each post must be unique and of a high quality to achieve better readership for your blog.

-Always respond to comments on your blog and when you detect a mention of your blog on another blog, give credits to that blogger in the comments of the post. It's more like building a readership plus your blogger profile.

-When making blog posts always cite the source with a link and don’t be afraid to mention popular bloggers by name. Use keywords in the blog post title, in the body of the post and use anchor text when you link to previous posts you’ve made.

-Use social networking services, forums and discussion threads to connect with other bloggers. If they like your stuff, they will link to you. Familiar with Digg? this will help your blog get discovered by others.

-Don't be shy! Always have the courage to talk about your blog on others, such as forums and social networking sites. This works like a free advertising for your blog.

These tips will generally help your blog from being "Just another Weblog" to an Authority and successful blog. There might be a lot of ways as well, but the tips above are the basic ways and fundamentals on making your blog work the way you want and to make it stand out from the rest of the blososphere.

Is Blogging Only For Making Money?

Profit does not always refer to money

When one gives a quick look at the articles written on blogging, the common theme seems to be making money from blogging. The authors invariably talk about adsense and how we can make money from blogs. Is blogging only for making money? Did blogs begin with that idea? Are we losing the direction somewhere?

The freedom to express

A blog gives an opportunity to everyone to express himself/herself on the Internet. We feel that we are sharing our deepest thoughts with other members of the world. Blogging is bringing the world nearer to each other like never before. In certain cases, a blog is a great therapy for venting out anger, frustration and other negative feelings, which can otherwise damage the psyche. Blogging was never started with the object of making money on the Internet.

Imagine the scenario when the majority of blogs will somehow try to collect content from different sources and hope that their ad gets clicked. Is that not wasting of quality time? Will such blogs contribute to the Internet at all? Who will visit such blogs? Everyone is busy building a blog that makes money, so why should he/she visit other blogs?

A blog can contribute to very lively discussion. A blog can be a great platform to meet people and talk. A blog is a great way to help budding talents show case their work to the world. Let us not make blogs only as a money making tool.

How about you? How do you consider your blog to be?

Why do some Bloggers Fail?

Previously, we have discussed a lot of ways to profit from blog, and we have also discussed on different methods on optimizing your blog for search engine optimization. Now Lets talk what things can make you're blogging career a failure.

No matter how brilliant your ideas are for your blog, it would just turn useless if you yourself fail to do what you should do for your blog. Taking all the patience for a blog is a must especially if you're up for a profit rather than fun.

Lack of determination

Every blog needs passion and determination to succeed. Without determination,  even the coolest blog with superb ideas out there would surely do not succeed. Keep the passion and determination for your blog to be alive. Enjoy on what you are doing rather than just getting over with it and write for the sake of profit.

Lending a deaf ear to the advice of others

Failure is guaranteed for those who ignore advice from experts. Trust and listen to the advice given by those who are more experienced in their fields. Study your predecessors and their strategies. It is better to learn from the mistakes of others and avoid making those in the future.

Non serious attitude

Since a blog  is started from your own comfortable place or home, many people do not take it seriously. This can cause failure of your blog's productivity. Keep a serious approach towards your blog and it should be  working productively. You should be prepared to take your blog seriously before starting it if you want to profit from it.

Lack of focus

Aside from the lack of determination. lack of focus is also one of  the most common reason for failing to blog. 

When our blog does not immediately shows the result we wanted, we sometimes get impatient and jump onto a conclusion of closing it or selling it to others or even worst just dumping it. When a blog begins to get a little tougher, most demotivated people get easily distracted and search another business which might yield better profits. The success of a blogs depends upon the dedication, patience and time we can give to it.

Stopping the learning process

Knowledge is power and it is relative to entrepreneurship. You should strive to learn more and more about your field, your blog's topic, and your skills. This will help you advance and progress in your blogging career and business. Remember it is never too late to stop learning from others and their experiences. 

As what you see, Blogging usually fails when you forgot the reason why you blog at the first place. It's better to blog about what you love as this will help you update and manage your blog productively 

Do you copy and paste articles for your blog ?

Originality is a very important factor that could be observed everywhere. In contests, it almost dominates the field of criteria. In blogging, originality should also be observed at all times.

Blogging is not about copying articles, editing it and then a few minutes later you just then post it to your blog. It is about showing something that is rarely seen from you and it is your writing ability accompanied with a talented brain.

Boosting all you had learned from your experiences and showing what you’ve really got. You should think of something new. You should use your own ideas rather than depending on others. You have your own brain so you better use it.

Thinking of new ideas is hard for others. Some find it easy. The fact that maybe your blog would not be interesting is one of the thinking of other bloggers resulting to their lost in their blog productivity. They think that they were just wasting their time because no one will read or like their articles. Every individual is unique, so you can’t judge them. 

We don’t know if they really like your articles.You should trust yourself and strengthen yourself for any possible reactions from the audience.In blogging there are no wrong or bad post, remember that a blog itself is a place where you express yourself!

The most important thing is to trust oneself and observe originality. No matter how hard it is for you to make at least one "great" post you should always remember that your blog is your place of creativity and passions and there are many possibilities that will happen.

For others, it has been a hobby to get articles from other sites then they just rewrite it. Familiar of content spinner? Well if you think that's the way for the productivity of your blog then you have totally gone wrong! This way of blogging is fast but the effect is in the long run and would slowly depreciate your blog's ranking on search engines. n reality, this is not really blogging but just a mere copying of article and may get you a copyright infringement.

If we really want to do something. We can really accomplish it as long as we have the passion to do it and the patience to wait for it. Making a new blog post is not hard. If you think deeper, why do others did it? How about you? Aren’t you tired of copying articles from them? When will you start believing that you can really achieve something by not copying from them. You should start a life being independent. With that, no doubt that you will be a very good blogger someday.

How to make your blog post memorable

Ever wondered how those top ranking blogs have a lot of comments on their posts? What do you think separates a good content from a bad one? Well, they all have a blog post that "sticks" to your mind or that is memorable. Let's get to all of this by getting the right ideas from blogs with posts that sticks to our minds.

Make it intriguing

Make your post memorable to your readers by making them more controversial. Such as making some arguments or practical views over something. When you make your post more intriguing, you can expect your readers to be interactive to your blog post and in turn makes it more memorable.

Know your audience

You might think that getting to know more about your audience will have no sense when making your post more memorable, then your totally wrong! Knowing your readers will certainly make your post great, you will learn what type of topics they like to read more on your blog making all of your blog post worthy to read for them. 

Target your post correctly

If you want to make your post more memorable then you need to make sure that your post corresponds to what your readers like. And if you want to achieve this, you have to target your post correctly. Say, you have a blog about delicious food then having the common sense you should know that your readers are all interested on the food topic and thus creating a blog post with a different topic will surely make it insensible.

Keep it alive

Related to making your posts more intriguing, you should make sure to make your blog posts more interactive by keeping it alive. Always try to reply to all of your readers' comments to keep the discussion alive and making your post more worthwhile discussing.

Every blog has it's own niche that interests it's readers, by leveraging to that fact you can make your post more worthwhile for your readers to read and making it more memorable to them.