Make Money Blogging-Plant Seeds Let Them Grow

Haven’t written here in a while. Well… the reason for that is that I have been busy applying what I have learned the past few months on other sites, 54 other sites to be exact. Have been making some money doing all this as well. Over the past month or two that I have been absent from ideasandmoney.info I have managed to put up over 50 sites, big and small, blogs, as well as simple and more complex affiliate sites. Bottom line is that I am actually making some cash now; still not enough, but way more than before. I am making money blogging, I am making money online. I am not a millionaire yet, unfortunately but I have a nice part-time income, to pay for my entertainment, some of my rent and other expenses. I have been thinking about this blog, I feel bad for leaving it like this, letting it sit and not actually doing anything with it. I decided to start posting again. My income grove is set up, I am making some money blogging and I think the pressure is off now. I will use this blog, this “make money blogging” blog to post about things that have worked for me just so anyone who is interested can benefit as well. If you want to get started you can read some stuff that I have written before in this blog. I will only direct you to some stuff, because the rest is bullshit. If not bullshit, it falls under the wider academic field of “noobology” and therefore should be avoided. This is where I would start if I were you.

By the way, this stuff applies for all kinds of blogs, all kinds of sites. This is what you should keep in mind:

Get Tons of Links

Get Even More Links

Blog SEO

1^st page on Google

Blogging Experimentation And Implementation

With Smorty you can blog for money.

I joined Smorty today and I have already started to blog for money. It is a blog advertising service that compensates bloggers for writing posts. I have been looking at Smorty for a while now but I only joined their today. I will be writing more about the service as I get a better idea of how it works. At a first glance the process of getting writing jobs seems relatively easy. Advertising campaigns are automatically emailed to suitable bloggers as soon as they get on the system. These jobs are picked up by bloggers on a first come first serve basis. The whole system is easy to understand and the layout is great in terms of navigation. What I enjoy the most about this system is that there aren’t many parameters you need to follow when writing and posting reviews. All your earnings are accumulated in your account and their system is set up in a way that you can get paid weekly and through pay pal. No long waits for checks, just post and get paid. Once you accept a job you will have 24 hours to write the review, and if you don’t it goes back into the system. I joined Smorty so I can blog for money, you can do the same.

I have decided to take the Adsense code off this blog. It is not that I decided against using Adsense in general just against using Adsense on this blog. For the past 3 months the code on this blog has brought in about $20…not great at all. When I started blogging, every monetization avenue seemed to be a good idea. Nevertheless, as time progressed I realized and learned many things. One of which is that Adsense does great in blogs/sites with search engine traffic. My search engine traffic is minimal and I decided that it is not enough to justify the Adsense on this site. Bad planning I guess…but good enough for a few lessons. Other blogs I started, in different niches are doing much better. They on the other hand get almost no traffic from social media, just search engines. For Ideas and Money I have decided to only keep Sponsored Reviews. Their affiliate program and the reviews make up for most of the revenue. I will be experimenting with a few other programs as well and see how it goes. Once I decide on one I will definitely write a post about it. In the meantime I would suggest keep getting backlinks and keep posting. At this point I have to say goodbye Adsense….at least for now…

Writing reviews can be a great source of income for a blog. I write reviews of other sites, money making opportunities for money making blogs or just different products. I do that by either dealing with webmasters directly or by getting writing gigs through Sponsored Reviews.

Sponsored Reviews

Sponsoredreviews.com is like a blog advertising agency. They are making money by connecting bloggers with advertisers; they keep 35% from what you charge the advertiser. There are a few other sites just like sponsoredreviews.com and they are reaping the benefits of blog marketing. As marketers are realizing the ways a blog can be boost their marketing strategies, right minded bloggers ought to be in the right position to offer their services. I will discuss why blogs are very important when it comes to online marketing in a second. First I would like to write a few things about Sponsoredreviews.com.

How it Works

Once you sign up and get accepted, you will have to create a profile page for your blog that outlines all the details. Automatically the system will create a total rank for your blog based on its Link Popularity, its Technorati and Alexa ranks. Then you should write a few words about your blog. You can see how my profile page looks here. Based on the rank you receive, there will be a maximum price set, a price that you can charge advertisers for reviews. Depending on your blog that price is set between $10 and $1000 per review.

Once your blog is in the system advertisers can contact you directly. They can go through all the registered blogs by searching for price, rank and relative keywords. Being contacted by advertiser rarely happens, at least for me. What I do is constantly bid for new jobs once they become available at the ‘Find Advertisers’ page. I also try bidding for the ones that have relevant keywords with the ones I am hoping to rank well in so when I write a review I get a few outbound links. Or you can just choose to bid on everything. It is up to you.

A Few Things to Keep in Mind

Make sure you don’t over charge per review. Keep your rate low, especially if you are new to the system; the lower the rate the better your chances in getting hired.

Once your bid is accepted, you are given a few directions, you are presented with the customer’s requirements and off you go... Advertisers are going for original content, so you will have to actually put some effort in the post. It is important to know, that advertisers can rate your work, your reviews. These ratings can only be seen by other advertisers and can influence their decisions. When writing, always give something more, write a few extra words, and include an extra link or a picture. Small things like these can help you get more work. The happier the advertiser, the better chances of him coming back, the better chances you have in getting more work. Making money blogging by writing reviews is really simple. If you have a decent blog, with decent rankings you can easily generate a few bucks doing so. If you think your blog still needs a bit more work before you can start making money blogging writing, then start putting in some work.

The Affiliate Program

While putting in this work to optimize your blog, you can still generate a few bucks by referring advertisers and bloggers to sponsored reviews. Aside from acting as a broker for buying and selling reviews, sponsoredreviews.com has an affiliate program set up. Through this program you can refer others and increase your earning potential. You can earn cash every time someone signs up. The way it works is that they will give you a cut of your referrals earnings.

Follow the link for more information. It is my affiliate link.

If you feel like I shouldn’t get paid for referring you then just type the URL in your browser, here it is: http://www.sponsoredreviews.com

When you sign up with sponsoredreviews.com make sure that you read the Rules and Policies section carefully. Here are three things that you always need to keep in mind when writing reviews with Sponsored Reviews:

All reviews must appear on the Homepage of your blog for at least 24 hours.
All reviews must contain unique content
Reviews cannot contain in-text advertising

There are a few more guidelines; as long as you read them carefully you shouldn’t have any problems.

If you have a blog you should consider using it to market products and services of your choice. I would suggest you do so selectively so you don’t compromise your content. Be prudent and writing for money will pay off in short and long run. There is nothing wrong with getting paid to write; but always keep your readers in mind. Don’t forget that it is because of the readers you are able to write for money. Lately more and more advertisers are increasingly including blogs in their marketing plans.

Why Blog Marketing Works

Highly Targeted Marketing

There is an 80% chance that you are reading this post because you want to learn about new ways to optimize your blog and make money blogging. The majority of bloggers out there will at some point consider monetizing their blog, or the ones that already have, will look for news ways to increase their revenue. Therefore, you will always get new visitors. At the end of the day, and when it ranks well, this blog will be an excellent place for advertisements of products that have to do with making money, saving money, optimizing and increasing traffic. As a result, reviewing products about making money blogging here can and will produce results.

Blogs are interactive

Readers will post comments, participate in discussions, talk about their experiences, about particular products/topics, draw their conclusions and possibly write about the same topic on their blogs. Aside from the extra exposure an advertiser can get it helps build presence for their website with. If you don’t know what I mean there are a few older posts of mine that will clarify any potential questions you might have. Read more on Keywords and Backlinks. The reason why sites like sponsoredreviews.com are so popular is because they give the advertiser the opportunity to engage in highly targeted marketing and at the same time build backlinks, and get t their sites rank better in search engine result pages, SERPS.

Backlinks

Internet marketers are aware of the importance of building backlinks. Ideally, one way links pointing back to their sites. When someone posts a link with a keyword pointing back to their page, it is like a vote; a vote of confidence for that particular site, at least for search engines. In order for, Google, lets say to weed out all the irrelevant results from searches, they came up with an algorithm that only shows the most popular pages for that keyword. In order to achieve this they rank pages with more links pointing back to them with particular keywords, better and higher. If you want your page to rank better for searches you should strive to get all the backlinks you can find. Other blogs are an excellent way of getting these links.

The purpose of this post was to present one more thing I have been up to and one more thing you can do and start making some more money blogging. If you are already a member on sponsoredreviews.com I hope I provided an interesting read and perhaps a source of inspiration for you to start working at it harder.

One of the reasons why I wrote this post, is that I have a plan to get this blog back on page one for the keyword ‘make money blogging’. You can read about my latest blogging goals here.

Make money blogging writing reviews

I will write a review for your make money blogging or internet marketing blog!

The only reason why I started this blog was to see if I could generate a few cents on the side by writing. The only reason why this blog was named Ideas and Money was the fact that I wanted to see if I could come up with a few ideas that would make me money. It wasn’t the first time someone tried this and certainly not that last. Since then I have had a few milestones, I have generated a few bucks and met a few nice people. One of the things I have done consistently is trying to connect with other bloggers. I have met a few very nice bloggers, who share similar interests with me. Sometimes it is hard to short through the countless blogs about making money. Most of them do not have anything unique; they are exactly the same with regurgitated material. Ok, all make money blogs do sound redundant, even this one for sure... However, there is a few that stick out. Blogs that are not amongst the established behemoths but are smaller and newer, they are however maintained by intriguing and resourceful writers entrepreneurs and marketers.

What I am getting at is that I want to start creating short of a network of similar minded bloggers, with the same interests and similar goals. I know that there are many social networking sites out there just for this purpose. Nevertheless, I will choose not to do this through a social network or a bookmarking site but through this blog. I decided to put this blog to use and start giving other relatively new and honest bloggers something back. Instead of money I decided to write short reviews about their blogs.

Aside from the usual posts, I will write a short review for make money blogging/online and marketing blogs; sites that have similar goals as mine. The daily featured blogs that will begin to appear here will have paid a symbolic fee of Entrecard credits just so I can put those credits to use and buy more advertising and consequently more exposure for the reviews. Aside from the reviews, which will be short, there will be a link to every blog, with the desired keyword, as a form of gratitude from me for allowing me to write about them. So stay tuned for a daily post about what other bloggers are doing to make money.

If you have a make money blogging or marketing blog and are interested in being reviewed, you can pursue that interest by clicking here. By doing so, you will also be satisfying your curiosity!

This blog is relatively new. It is just over three months old. It gets a steady amount of traffic, from Entrecard, StumbleUpon, Google and directly. The traffic doubles every month, so does the income. I have a feeling that it will never be enough, traffic or money. It is not greed that drives my efforts but the fact that I constantly want to make this blog better and better. Making money blogging can be easy and difficult at the same time. Based on my experiences, I know exactly what to do and what not to do to get any blog to reach an average of at least 200-300 unique visits a day and bring in at least $20-$30 dollars a day. There is a list of things that anyone can do to get any blog into a groove; a traffic and income groove. I am even thinking of putting everything together on a PDF and make all the advice available to anyone interested. I can even charge money for that book. I am thinking of charging anywhere from $0 to $0.01. Why? Because I don’t feel that this information is that special. I am not doing anything special or groundbreaking or new. I am just reading information available online, testing what works and what doesn’t and then apply it here. Sometimes I test things out and rule out what doesn’t work. If I can do it, you can do it, anyone can.

After posting daily for a couple of weeks, I realized the importance of doing so for a blog that relies on Web 2.0 applications for traffic. As I post daily, traffic remains steady with over 200 visits a day. Past week I posted once and traffic fell to about 100 daily unique visitors.

I haven’t posted so much this week not only because I thought I should take some time and do other things, but because I wanted to see how it would do. The results were not that pleasant. Nevertheless, the drop in traffic will not deter me.

The reason why there was a substantial drop in traffic is because this blog relies mostly on Web 2.0 applications to get traffic; Entrecard and StumbleUpon being the primary sources. As the number of posts decreases so does the traffic.

In the past week I decided to change that. I want to take action and begin restructuring this blog so that it can get most of its traffic from search engines.

I have tried a few things here and there and can say that I have seen some success. I got on the first page of Google for the keywords “make money blogging” and a few others. Make money with Entrecard, Entrecard Tips, The SEO tree, just to mention a few.

Since I got on the first page of Google for the keyword Make Money Blogging and due to the competitive nature o f that particular keyword, I have dropped a few pages to number 3.

My ‘Make Money with Entrecard’ post is still number one for that search, and so is my post titled ‘Entrecard Tips’.

Even though I managed to get these two on the first page, the amount of traffic I am getting is still not significant. What I want to do is to try to get on the first page for the keyword Entrecard.

The Goals

What I am aiming to do is to get back on the first page for Make Money Blogging and perhaps some other ‘make money’ keyword as well.

Get all my Entrecard related posts on the first page for the keyword Entrecard.

Once I get back on the first page for all of these keywords, I will continue to practice with other keywords and start planning what other Marketing blogs I can create and use the same method to start making some money.

The Method

Plain and simple SEO

I did it before I can do it again.

Make Money Blogging is a difficult keyword to rank high in. So I wll need to put in some work. I will start by putting together some posts on making money, how I make money blogging, write and publish articles for backlinks, and continue to do what I have been doing but better.

To start I will wite three posts, one on how to make money blogging by writing reviews and posts, one more comprehensive one about Adsense and one more about Entrecard and how I profit by using the system.

I will focus on these three fields and see how well I do.

Make Money Blogging with Entrecard

Make Money Blogging by Writing Reviews

Make Money Blogging with Adsense

I don’t know how long it will take to complete these goals but I am thinking it should take a few weeks to a month.

Things to keep in Mind

I will try to make every post keyword intensive,

Every post will be lengthy, over 1000 words,

For every post I write I am going to publish 15 articles with backlinks using all of the methods outlined in previous posts.

By keeping my efforts focused I am certainly going to be able to see the best results possible and in the end I will know what works and what doesn’t.

If you have read up to here, I am really eager to find out what you think of all his. I am open to suggestions and recommendations.

Feel free to comment, and/or subscribe to my feed and let me keep you posted on how all this will work out.

Don’t listen to others! Do your own thing.

Read, Think, Focus

There are countless blogs out there; tens of millions if not more. How many of those are the worthy ones? A few hundred thousand? Maybe… I think that there are much less.

I visit a few hundred blogs a day. I read a few dozen posts a day and comment on some too. The majority of blogs I come across are about things that relate to what I am doing. I try to see what is going on, what other are writing about, to connect with others with similar interests and get some buzz going for my blog.

Out of the few hundred blogs I visit daily, I can confidently say that there are a handful of people out there who are getting it.

I haven’t been blogging for to long to be in the position to judge others about what they do and how they proceed with their blogs, but I can freely say that not that many people out there are efficient in what they do. Not saying that I am …far from…but still, I have managed to get this blog out of the experimentation stage of development and learning and into the implementation stage.

The experimentation stage
I will focus on the blogs that are about ways to make money.
This stage is when someone starts a blog. They visit one of the big blogs that post how much money they make and are impressed. So they start their own. The thoughts that come in mind are:

How difficult can it be?
If he/she can do it why cant I?

And so the blogging journey begins, or I should be more specific? The making money blogging journey. Making money blogging is easy and difficult at the same time. It is easy because it does not take any special training, expertise to start learning how to make money on the internet and particularly blogging. All you need is access to some information; get a few good leads and practice. Practice what you learn, see if it works, if it does, do it again but better. If something doesn’t work, stop doing it and try something new. It is difficult because aside form the fact that you need to be able to sell something, you need to constantly educate yourself about SEO, network, promote and write. Aside from the everyday things I just stated, I believe that there is one thing that every blogger goes through and it is the most difficult thing to overcome.

The most difficult thing for any blogger to do is to stop listening to other people’s advice. I am not saying that reading other blogs is a bad thing; it’s just that if you are constantly following what others do, in the end of the day you will have started a bunch of things but not necessarily completed or done well in any.

So by visiting other blogs I come across a lot of bloggers who are in the experimentation phase or the listening stage. I can tell because I was in that stage a few months ago. Signs of someone being in this stage are:

Tons of widgets
Affiliate Links
Advertisements

Those bloggers are just adding things with the hope that something will work. In the end nothing works, and they have expended all their energy reading, posting, and placing widgets. Don’t get me wrong experimentation is a great thing, instead of trying a million things at once, experiment with one thing a week, or a month depending on your traffic. See if you make any money and if you didn’t try the next one. If something is not working for you, try to fix it, if it is still not working, it didn’t for a reason…move on to the next one.

Before you proceed in one direction…don’t forget to use your judgment, think for a second and make sure which direction you would like your blog to go in.

The implementation Stage

Someone arrives in this stage after they have decided which direction they will follow. Once you decide what monetization method you will use, you implement it and focus on how you can maximize your revenue. Think of it like this: if you are trying to dig a hole in the ground, will you use a dull object or will you prefer a sharp one? I like the analogy of the spear. All of its weight, when held the right way, is concentrated in its point. When energy comes in the equation, that point can really do some damage. In our case, it is not damage we are looking for but better content, more traffic and more money.

See what works for you, focus your energy on one thing, and do it better and maximize its potential. I suggest you pick a maximum of three monetization methods and keep working on them. Write, promote network, optimize and focus on these three methods and it wont be long until you start making some money blogging.

If you are interested in reading more about what I do, I suggest:

Make Money with Entrecard
Blog Marketing and then some more
Blog marketing

You can also subscribe to my feed.

So as you can see I am giving Spottt a try… Spottt is the new way to advertise for free on the internet.

The way it works is you place the HTML code for the 125x125 ad on your site. This spot displays other advertisements. The more page impressions the advertiser gets the more credits you earn. These credits are automatically used by Spottt to display your add on other sites. I say sites because it is not only for blogs but all kinds of websites including MySpace profiles as well. Anyhow, as I said, every time your webpage/blog features another user ad you gain one credit. It takes two credits show your spot on other members sites so I guess Spottt keeps 1 impression to make available for others?... to sell? I am not quite sure where that impression goes. Nevertheless they take 50% of your impressions.

The whole system works like a cross between Entrecard and Blogrush. There is the Entrecard 125x125 idea and the random display of ads that Blogrush was based on. You can see how it looks, it is the little box on the left side of my blog. The Spottt has just over 2000 members and growing. According to TechCrunch, spot was created by adbrite with the assistance of some guy the cofounder of Linkexchange. I don’t understand why someone would need assistance to create something like this…all they made is a hybrid of two other existing services out there. Anyhow, there are some benefits associated with using Spottt, especially for websites that get a lot of traffic. As the amount of traffic you get increases so will the amount for times your spot, your 125x125, will be displayed on other sites. However, most people that will be using Spottt have smaller blogs and websites so it kind of defeats the purpose no? If I have a booming website and join Spott, my 125x125 will be displayed the most times and since the amount of total members is fixed, I will be doing much better than any other site/blog member of the network. So if you have a small blog with only a little traffic, why waiste your time and potentially useful adspace just for a few cliks a month? Old Blogrush users might be able to relate to this better… I tried Blogrush for a month and I think I got a whopping total of 3 unique visitors. Mind you that my blog was getting 6 times less traffic then so my links where displayed 6 times less. So perhaps know, I have a better chance, we will see…

Just to be fair, aside from how Spottt could be beneficial for some established sites it does have one more interesting feature. A feature that I appreciate the most. It is called the `set it and forget it feature`. All you need to do is join Spottt, copy and paste the HTML code above the fold of your site and you are good to go. In theory traffic should start rolling in.

The bottom Line

I joined I few days ago but placed the ad on my blog earlier today. There where ads displayed on the widget right away. Some time had to pass before my ad got displayed on other sites but by looking at the stats now, at the end of the day, I noticed this:

In words…my ad was shown 190 times on other sites and I got 0 clicks! Not good at all. On a good day I can get anywhere between 1000 or 2000 page impressions, that would translate 500-1000 displays of my ad on other sites. I am curious about how many clicks I will get then. What I will do is let Spottt run for a total of 5,000 impressions. I don’t know how long that would take it depends on you, the visitors and readers, it might take a week or a day...

One more thing I don’t like is that I do not have any control of what is being displayed in the widget. In other words on certain occasions I could have an ad for some persons Myspace profile. I really don’t like that at all.

You can also try it out yourself and see if it works for you. Or, if you want to learn more, you can read the relative post on the Entrecard blog where there is a comprehensive comparison between Spottt and Entrecard.

The SEOtree is labelled as the SEO friendly network for bloggers. The title is quite descriptive… The ‘tree’ encompasses 4 components; you could say that there are 4 branches… Every part, branch, is essential for effective SEO, Search Engine Optimization. The tree is a great starting point for the novice and any other blogger alike because, participating in every branch/component can help you enhance your blogs presence. It is search engine friendly and by participating you get the essential backlinks, more traffic and you network with other bloggers. The SEOtree is not a ground breaking concept. There are countless directories and social networks out there. What I like is that everything is put together in one place, waiting for you to just go and ‘pick the fruit’.

Networking and backlinks should be things that every blogger pursues. The more you participate in social networks, the more visitors you will get. As the number of backlinks to your blog increases, the better you rank in searches. It is pretty straight forward and fairly simple. I personally like the SEOtree because it combines all these features in one location.

Anyhow, lets take the components one by one.

The SEOtree Social Network

The SEOtree Social allows users/bloggers to submit articles. Once these articles are submitted, other users vote if they like them and once they get enough votes they show up in the front page. When you first submit an article it shows up in the Upcoming News and it will stay there until it becomes popular.

This is not a new concept, Digg, StumbleUpon, del.icio.us, Bloggingzoom are all, in one way or another, based on the same idea. What I like about the SEOtree Social, aside form the backlinks, is that it is brand new. Becoming part of the network now and by submitting a few decent articles will guarantee you a place on the first page. As the tree grows, more visitors show up every day, your posts will be getting a bigger piece from the action. It is really easy to submit your articles, I don’t know if you are familiar with bloggingzoom, but it works the same way. All you need to do is to bookmark the article you want to submit with the SEOtree bookmark button that you should copy in your bookmarks.

The SEOtree Directory

This particular blog directory is edited by humans and all blogs are quality blogs. You are presented with three options when it comes to submitting.

You can choose between Regular links with reciprocal for free. Which means you will have to incorporate a link back to SEOtree on your blog; regular links go for $5 dollars and featured links for $10. I am going to submit my blog with the link: Make Money blogging linking back to www.ideasandmoney.info. It will look like this: Make Money Blogging. Directories are important tools in building link popularity and as a result, thay help improve search engine ranking. They constitute an great way to get inbound, one-way links, which are the most powerful types of links. They help you build link popularity and rank better in searches. The more directories you submit to the better... you always want to submit your site to more directories than other competing blogs. Link popularity plays an important role in link popularity for search engines, the more you have the better you rank. The SEOtree directory uses simple links without any redirection; these are the good ones and can benefit both for your link popularity and your page rank. The higher the page rank of the page linking to you the higher the page rank your page will get.

The SEOtree Forum

There is a forum section as well. Participating in the forum can also be beneficial. Like every other forum it helps you make connections and drive highly targeted traffic to your site. You can see how it looks for yourself.

There is also an ad revenue sharing setup which means users of the forum will be able to incorporate their Adsense or Yahoo Publisher Network

There is also a blog, The SEOtree Blog that you can visit for the latest news.

In this post I will set out to examine the results of my recent optimizations for search engines and show you that what I have been doing actually works. I have put together a one hour daily routine, of writing, optimizing, posting, networking and then some more optimizing and I have managed to climb up the Google ladder quite a bit. I admit that some days, on weekends, I spend a little bit more time….when averaging it out…lets say 1 and ½ hours to two hours to be fair. Anyway, my efforts have been focused primarily on two sets of keywords:

Make Money Blogging, and

Make Money with Entrecard

Not even a month ago I started making my first optimization efforts. The post from February 5 titled “Search Engine Optimization” demonstrates those efforts. Following that post, I wrote a second one on the same topic about Keywords and Backlinks. Then, last week I posted a few tips about Optimizing with Webmaster tools; tips that I had been following as well.

I did not do anything more or anything less. I did what I wrote on the above posts; as much as I could, day in and day out. The tips are simple, straight forward and easy to follow. The most important thing is that they produced results.

How many blogs about making money blogging do you think are out there? An example, there is a total of 5,000 blogs on Entrecard and 398 of them are about making money online, that is almost 10%. I think it is safe to assume that 10% of all blogs out there are about how to make money online or blogging. When searching for the particular set of keywords on Google, you are presented with almost 100 pages of sites. 96 to be exact, I went through them earlier. 100 result pages and 10 results per page, that is a total of 1000. A month ago, I noticed that this blog was hovering between pages 13 and 15. Then after a month of doing these simple but very important little things, my blog shows up at page 4. Take a look:

It is the 5^th result on page 4 which means 35^th from the top. Not page 1, but still way better than page 13.

If you have been reading this blog, then you will know by now that I like Entrecard. I like Entrecard because it brings in traffic and makes me money at the same time. On average about $10 dollars a day. Not a lot but it is a steady source of income. I am not going to get in the specifics here but you can get a better idea by reading the post Make money with Entrecard. After writing that post, it appeared on page one then disappeared and then reappeared on page 4 of Google for the particular search. Then today I noticed this:

Both my posts on Entrecard, Make money with Entrecard and Entrecard Tips are results number 1 and 2. I don’t know how these results will fluctuate over the next few days but what I do know is that I will continue to do what I am doing, as well as learn more on search engine optimization.

Let me keep you posted. Subscribe to my feed.

Are you achieving your full marketing potential?

I don’t have much experience blogging, just over two months to be exact, but I am starting to realize the immense potential of these great marketing vehicles…our blogs.

I work in media, television and radio mostly. Among other things, producing, writing hosting… I do sales…advertising sales. I plan marketing campaigns that extend between the two media and have over 5 years of experience doing so.

When it comes to selling, I do sales the good old fashion way. I get a lead, call them up, talk to them about their business, see how it is going, learn about what they feel needs to be improved and make my suggestions on how to spice things up with some advertising. I have seen advertising successes and failures first hand. For some, advertising on television and/or radio can be very profitable and for others a waste of time and money.

I focus my efforts on getting someone on board for the long run. Keep a customer satisfied, and he will come back. High retention levels mean easier sales, more money for the business and more money for me. A customer will come back, an advertiser will renew his/hers contract, when they see results. The easiest sale to make is to someone who has already seen what you can offer and liked it! The hard ones are the new ones. How do you persuade a potential advertiser to buy? How do you get new customers?

If you have read up to here you might be wondering why I am bothering with writing all this stuff. Well….because I want to prove a point; just bare with me for a little bit…

Most new customers/advertisers will be a reluctant to spend their money right away. They want to see demographics, statistics; they want to be certain that their advertisement will be seen by people that might buy their product or service. Nevertheless, my experience has shown that even if you have the most accurate data about who is watching or listening at a particular time, there is still a huge possibility that the advertisement won’t work. The advertisers know that, that is why they are reluctant in the first place. Even if you advertise here, on this highly targeted blog, it might work or it might not…In the case of television your ad will have a better chance to work when it is placed in the right slot, during the right show and the right time.

When someone places an advertisement on a blog they do so because they know what kind of readers that blog attracts. If it is a recipes blog, then the most successful advertisements will be those revolving around food, cooking and so on. If it is a make money blog like this the advertisements should be about money making opportunities or about how to increase ones traffic. The great thing about blogs is that they have readers that are interested in a particular topic.

This blog has readers that also have blogs, like you, and perhaps are interested in making more money blogging. One third of this blogs readers came from Entrecard and they might be interested in making money with Entrecard. Another third of the readers came from StumbleUpon and they might want to learn how to increase StumbleUpon traffic themselves. Aside from interlinking my blogs posts what I am doing here is using this post to `market` my older ones. I created a context in which older posts became relevant again…I could go on and write one more paragraph about the importance of increasing traffic when building a solid marketing vehicle for contextual products for your advertisers….Or even better how to run an advertising campaign and make money at the same time with Entrecard. Do you see what I mean?

Advertising on the other hand does not necessarily utilize the notion of the `context` in getting a message across. Marketing does!

There is a down side to advertising, even on blogs. Sometimes you can place an ad on a high traffic blog and never make any sales or even get any clicks, it happens. Your 125x125 ad might not be enough to do the trick. It might not have been the best day/week/month to advertise or perhaps your ad plain and simple, flat out sucked. Who knows? To get a few things straight…Lets limit this discussion to blogs that get moderate amounts of traffic. Let’s say 5,000 to 10,000 unique visits per month, like this blog. That means that almost 10,000 people check out the pages of this blog every month. Most of them come here for tips and advice. Wouldn’t it be nice to have lets say, half of those people read a post about something you wrote and follow a link to your site? I know I would love to have an extra 2000 visitors! It would be nice because I know how I can convert those visitors into dollars. Do you?

In order to fully grasp the magnitude of the wonders a blog can do for the advertiser is to comprehend the difference between the term marketing and advertising.

Wikipedia defines marketing as a societal process which discerns or, in other words, distinguishes consumers' wants. Once those needs and wants are distinguished, marketing focuses on a particular product or service to fulfill those wants, attempting to mold the consumers toward the products or services offered.

Marketing is a process, a societal process. Advertising is just one part of the marketing process. You can buy advertising on television, radio, a website but that will not necessarily mean that it will be effective. What will be more effective than advertising is building a community around your service or product. So, in my opinion advertising is effective when it is combined with an interactive process of community building.

That is why advertising on a blog can be more effective that advertising on some other kind of website or even TV show for that matter. Advertising on TV might get you more sales, depending on the reach however it might not be as effective in creating a community around that product. Also it really does cost more.

Advertising on a blog can be easily combined with other forms of marketing, like a contest, a post, a review an intriguing article that describes what is being offered and creates a `context` of validity that will intrigue the reader to follow a particular path.

Why is it great to market your product on a blog?

Highly Targeted Marketing

There is an 80% chance that you are here because you want to read about things you can do to make money blogging. The majority of blogger out there will at some point think about monetizing their blog, or get a better service to do so. Therefore there will always be more visitors. The down side is the competition, but it is not that hard to get 10,000 visitors a month and build an above average blog.

Blogs are interactive

Readers will post comments, participate in discussions, talk about their experiences about particular products/topics draw their conclusions and possibly write about the same topic on their blogs. Aside from the extra exposure an advertiser can get it helps build a better presence for their website with more backlinks. If you don’t know what I mean there are a few older posts of mine that will clarify any potential questions you might have. Read more on Keywords and Backlinks

Write Sponsored Reviews

If you are a blogger then you should be considering using your blog to market products and services of your choice. I would suggest you do so selectively so you don’t compromise your content. Be prudent and not greedy and it will pay off in the long run. Don’t think that you can trick your readers, they are smarter than you think, probably smarter than you! If you proceed on the writing for money path, make sure your reviews are honest and helpful. Get paid to write, there is nothing wrong with that; but always have the reader in mind. Don’t forget that it is because of the readers you are able to write for money.

So how can someone go upon writing for money?

Well I am pretty sure you have some across the different services out there that take a cut to connect advertisers with bloggers. Pay per post is one, and Sponsored Reviews is another one. I am active in the second one. They also have a referral program through which you can make a few dollars for referring other bloggers and advertisers. If you join through my referral links I will make 5 dollars for the first 50 you make and 10 for the next 200 or something like that.

Buy Reviews

Sponsored reviews keep 35% from what you charge the advertiser which is pretty decent. You can set your price anywhere from $10 to $1000 per review. What I like about Sponsored reviews is that the pay through PayPal and on a bi-weekly basis.

You don’t necessarily have to go through a `middle man` to get advertisers you can do it by yourself as well, talk to potential advertisers, make them offers and bargain. Make a move, act now think before you act and you should be ok. When I say think, I mean think! Don’t read what others are saying about a method a topic, don’t follow instructions blindly not even mine. See what is best for you, what suites your need, change things around and apply what you think will work best for you, for your blog.

If you have found this post helpful, then write a comment, if you only want me to read it, then specify so I can moderate it.

If you want to take this one step further, I will help you get started with writing for money. If you want to write about this blog, I will sponsor you! I will pay you with Entrecard credits to write a review for this blog, or a post you enjoyed reading. Post here or contact me through my Entrecard profile

http://entrecard.com/details/6436

For those who found this post helpful subscribe to this blog because there will be way more to come!

This post is about Entrecard and its potential use as a source of income.

(If you have no clue about what I am saying check out this introductory post on Entrecard.)

Entrecard is a great way to increase traffic to your blog. If you are reading this post right now there is a good chance you came from Entrecard so I won’t really get into the whole thing, if you would like to read more check out Entrecard Tips.

Aren’t my Photoshop skills impressive…lol

Entrecard Credits and Real Currency

The basis of the ‘Entrecard system’ is the Entrecard credit or e.c’s. The value of advertising on your blog, on any blog for that matter, is represented by an amount of credits. These credits are the Entrecard currency. The amount of credits required to advertise on ones blog is a direct outcome of the amount of Entrecard traffic/drops that blog is getting. In other words, Entrecard credits are directly analogous to traffic. The more traffic you get the more credits you make. The more visits and drops you make the more credits are added to your account. The more traffic/drops a blog gets the more credits it costs to advertise on that blog just because more people visit and drop on it. It’s pretty straight forward…

Entrecard is great because it gives the opportunity to bloggers with less or no traffic and income to advertise and get more visitors for free. In general however, advertising costs money. Sometimes, a lot of money…. Within Entrecard, credits are the equivalent of money. They are advertising dollars, and they are used by the at least 4,000 members to buy and sell advertising. Since Entrecard credits are used for advertising and advertising costs money, it is pretty easy to make the correlation between Entrecard credits and real money….dollars.

Making More Credits/Dollars with Entrecard

What are the ways for making more credits and eventually more money with Entrecard? Well, the answer is pretty straight forward. First you need to answer one question. Ask yourself, what am I selling?

You are selling traffic. When someone buys an ad on your blog they pay with the intent to get more visits. So you as a seller must be able to give your advertisers, your Entrecard ‘clients’ the best value for their advertising dollars. When someone places an ad on your widget for 100 and got 10 visits then they paid 10 credits per visitor. The more visits someone gets when they advertise on you the higher the possibility for them to advertise again; which would mean more credits for you. To make more credits and get more for traffic for your advertisers you need to be active in the community. You need to drop a lot and try and get other Entrecard members to your blog. Being active in the forums is a good way of doing so. The more time you spend on the community the more visitors you will get. Eventually you will learn ways to decrease that time spent, and as you get better in attracting people to your blog the time you spend doing so will decrease.

The best way to accumulate more credits is to remain active. As you use the system credits will rack up.

Drop a lot and drop smart. Drop to get a drop back.

Drop a lot.

Pretty straight forward advice…Visit as many blogs and drop on as many widgets as you can. Ideally, you should reach the daily drop limit of 300 every day.

Receive drops.

Drop on people who reciprocate drops. Keep track of your inbox on Entrecard and drop back on them. Some will appreciate that and always drop back. Get organized, get the RSS feed of your inbox, check it daily. Add blogs that reciprocate drops to your favourites, drop on them daily. Weed out the ones that don’t return drops and keep doing what works best. Also when you get more drops the price to advertise on your blog increases….

Receiving drops is very important in accumulating credits. Just think about it. If you drop 300 cards a day on people who will all reciprocate drops, you will be accumulating 600 credits a day. 600 day x 7, that 4,200 a week, x 52 that’s 218,400 credits a year. Since there is no limit on the drop one can receive, and there are 4,000 possible daily droppers out there, you could be getting way more than just 300 drops on you per day.

Don’t get excited, this is all hypothetical. Even if you drop 300 a day the chances of having those 300 bloggers reciprocate are pretty slim. You can fine tune your dropping over time or rank higher in your category buy advertising and get more people dropping.

Ok, so you drop a lot and you get drops back. That’s great but you are still not maximizing your Entrecard earning potential. Doing so involves selling things for credits in the shop.

The Entrecard shop

There is a shop and you can actually use it. Anyone can. You can sell advertising for more than one day, sell custom logos, capitalize on your writing skills, anything that might have a monetary value, and that could interest a buyer, could be sold. There are several other sellers in the shop that might be selling similar things with you. Don’t be discouraged, be competitive. Sell for less, give more value and you can always count on making a sale.

How much is an Entrecard Credit worth?

Well, how much do you value a visitor? How much would you pay for 100, 200, 300, or even 1,000 visitors? How much would you pay for just over 200 visits? There is no ‘Entrecard Standard’ maybe there should be maybe there shouldn’t be. I don’t know… however, it all boils down to how much you value a visit. Would you pay 500 credits for 500 visits? I know I would. Having 500 visitors in one day can be great. So what if most of them will come here just to drop. Even if I get 20 out of the 500 stick around I and read and two of them actually join an affiliate program or make a purchase through my blog, I could make that 500 credits back ten fold! How about 1000 credits for a thousand visitors? You could get those visitors for less than $10.

I’ll sell you 1,000 credits for $8. Just visit my profile and send me a message.

The way I see it you can use Entrecard to make money in two ways: Directly and Indirectly.

Profit from Entrecard Directly

Make more credits.

More credits mean more advertising for you or for others who are willing to buy the credits from you. People buy and sell Entrecard credits every day. I have bought and sold credits as well. All you need is a paypal account and some cash or credits depending on whether you are buying or selling. The rates fluctuate on a day to day or even a shop to shop basis. Meaning, some days you will find credits for less and some days for more. Supply and demand, I guess… I have bought and sold chunks of 1000 credits for $10, $9 and $8. Depends on the day, the buyer and the seller. If you are serious about getting visitors and potentially readers, spending a few bucks is a good idea. If you don’t want to spend any money from your pocket you can even use your Project Wonderful earnings to buy these credits.

If someone is interested in buying Entrecard credits he/she can post in the Entrecard forums in the promotions and wait for a reply. Once, I sold 1000 credits in less than a minute. Another time I posted and never got any replies, it depends. You can also do so through ebay and wait around for a few days. You might get a good price you might not. It’s up to you. There are people out there that do it on a daily basis. They trade the Entrecard credit. Entrecash and Entrecredits are two good examples. They are in the business of buying and selling credits. They buy low and sell high. When I sell I don’t sell as high as they do but I still get my credits worth.

Profit from Entrecard Indirectly

Get more readers

Entrecard works great in increasing traffic. Small or large old or new, all kinds of blogs can benefit. Ok, most of the visitors that get here drop and move on but there are some that actually read and stick around for a while. If you are interested in making money blogging then you should read about the kinds of traffic and especially about the money making kind of traffic.

So, as I was saying….entrecard works great in getting visitors and potentially readers. If you came from Entrecard and read up till this point just proved that some traffic is of the good kind. If you write a comment, then not only you will get a precious backlink, but you will have proven that not all Entrecard traffic is bad, there is community participation and that the system actually works well. Some of the visitors will turn into readers, some into helpful friends, and some will possibly try out one of your blogs suggestions or links and make you a few cents. More visitors and traffic could mean more backlinks for you, a higher Alexa ranking, a page rank eventually and perhaps when you decide to start writing posts for money you can ask for more.

Aside from all of the positive things of this make credits make money argument there is down side; a counter argument. As more and more people accumulate credits and make them available for sale their price will decrease. Will it decease to the point where it is not worth selling them anymore? Will they decrease to the point where it is not worth using Entrecard? Will it be way to hard to make credits to advertise on the blogs that are expensive, the ones that will bring in the most traffic? I don’t know… For the point being I know that Entrecard credits do have a value, a tangible value. I know for a fact that x amount of credits can get me x amount of visitors. Sometimes a little more and other times a little less. I believe that over time, and if the community keeps growing at the same pace credit value will, to some extent, stabilize.

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