How to become rich with your blogs
Hi friends,
Blogging has become an interesting occupation. In fact more and more people are exploring it to make money through blogs.So is it really possible to be rich by writing blogs? Well, i would say yes because i’ve become rich blogging.Here are some tips to bring more viewers to your blogs and ultimately mint money out of it.
• Highlight Related Posts – one of the more common practices of bloggers to encourage readers to read multiple pages on their blogs is to to highlight related posts at the end of your article.
• Interlink within Posts – a similar but perhaps more effective technique is to highlight relevant posts within the content of your posts. If you’re writing a post that mentions something similar to what you’ve written before simply link to your previous post from within your article.
• Highlight Key Posts and Categories in your Blog’s Hotspots – The hottest posts on this blog are those highlighted in my top three menus. Specifically it is those in the top left hand box at the top of this page that are always at the top of my most read post statistics. Depending upon the goals of your blog – you may wish to fill your blog’s hotspots with ads or affiliate programs – or you may want to highlight key posts that are central to your blog and which will hook readers into what your blog is about (thereby increasing page views). Highlighting your category pages is also another similarly useful technique to encourage your readers to find more posts on the same topic. To explicitly name what your category is can also be useful. ie rather than just having the category name at the end of the post – try something like ‘read more posts like this in our ((insert category name)) category’ or ‘filed under ((insert category name))’ etc. • Compilation Pages – Extending the previous idea about highlighting key posts you may wish to use posts in these positions that sneeze readers not just to one post on your blog but many.
• Series – While you need to be a bit careful with writing series of posts over periods of time, they are a great way to keep readers coming back and once they are complete to have them surf through multiple pages on your blog. The most popular series on this blog is my Adsense for Bloggers series which leads readers through 8 posts. Don’t just do a series for the sake of increasing page views of course – this can really frustrate readers but use them on longer posts or when you’re genuinely wanting to interact with a larger topic over time.
• Excerpts on Front Pages –I personally like using excerpts on front pages it is not about page views for me. Personally using excerpts in this way is more about keeping my front page manageable and highlighting multiple posts on the front page. ie if a reader can come to my blog and see not only the last post but the title of the second and maybe even the third post then they are more likely to explore more than just the last thing you’ve written. I tend to only use the extended entry feature on longer articles and allow shorter ones of a paragraph or two go up on the main page – unless I either forget or see the post as an important one.
• Excerpts in RSS –There is always debate over this topic of full or partial RSS feeds. I know some bloggers main purpose in partial feeds is to get bloggers directly onto their blog – thereby increasing their impression/page view count. While this is certainly a benefit of partial feeds it is not my own reason for using them. Rather I use them for copyright protection and to stop people scraping my full content onto their site’s via RSS. Whatever reason you choose to use partial/excerpt feeds – you should also realize that doing so will cause some readers to unsubscribe to your blog completely. I know in going only with partial feeds that there are some other bloggers who refuse to visit my blog – this is a cost/benefit scenario that individual bloggers need to weigh up.
• Enable links in RSS Feeds – Another way is to enable the ability to post html/links in their RSS and then using links to previous posts in their blog, especially in the first paragraph or two of their posts.
• Search Function – most blog blog platforms have the ability to use a search feature on your blog which enables users to search your blog for keywords. This feature obviously helps your readers to locate other posts on your site and as a result increases the potential for a multiple page view visit.
• Build an Interactive Blog – one way to get readers coming back to your blog many times over a day is to have a blog that people want to interact with.
• Quality Content -This should go without saying but needs to be reinforced. Obviously if you write quality content your readers will want more of the same. Useful, original and interesting content should leave your readers hungering for more.
• Choose the Right Blog Software:The right blog CMS makes a big difference. If you want to set yourself apart, I recommend creating a custom blog solution - one that can be completely customized to your users. In most cases, WordPress, Blogger, MovableType or Typepad will suffice, but building from scratch allows you to be very creative with functionality and formatting.
• Host Your Blog Directly on Your Domain: Hosting your blog on a different domain from your primary site is one of the worst mistakes you can make. A blog on your domain can attract links, attention, publicity, trust and search rankings - by keeping the blog on a separate domain, you shoot yourself in the foot.
• Write Title Tags with Two Audiences in Mind: First and foremost, you’re writing a title tag for the people who will visit your site or have a subscription to your feed. Title tags that are short, snappy, on-topic and catchy are imperative. You also want to think about search engines when you title your posts, since the engines can help to drive traffic to your blog.
• Participate at Related Forums & Blogs: Whatever industry or niche you’re in, there are bloggers, forums and an online community that’s already active. Depending on the specificity of your focus, you may need to think one or two levels broader than your own content to find a large community, but with the size of the participatory web today, even the highly specialized content areas receive attention.
• Tag Your Content: Technorati is the first place that you should be tagging posts. -
• Launch Without Comments (and Add Them Later): There’s something sad about a blog with 0 comments on every post. It feels dead, empty and unpopular. Luckily, there’s an easy solution - don’t offer the ability to post comments on the blog and no one will know that you only get 20 uniques a day. Once you’re upwards of 100 RSS subscribers and/or 750 unique visitors per day, you can open up the comments and see light activity.
• Don’t Jump on the Bandwagon: Some memes are worthy of being talked about by every blogger in the space, but most aren’t. Just because there’s huge news in your industry or niche DOES NOT mean you need to be covering it, or even mentioning it (though it can be valuable to link to it as an aside, just to integrate a shared experience into your unique content). Many of the best blogs online DO talk about the big trends - this is because they’re already popular, established and are counted on to be a source of news for the community. If you’re launching a new blog, you need to show people in your space that you can offer something unique, different and valuable - not just the same story from your point of view. This is less important in spaces where there are very few bloggers and little online coverage and much more in spaces that are overwhelmed with blogs (like search, or anything else tech-related). - • Link properly: When you link out in your blog posts, use convention where applicable and creativity when warranted, but be aware of how the links you serve are part of the content you provide.
• Invite Guest Bloggers: Asking a well known personality in your niche to contribute a short blog on their subject of expertise is a great way to grow the value and reach of your blog. You not only flatter the person by acknowledging their celebrity, you nearly guarantee yourself a link or at least an association with a brand that can earn you readers.
• Avoid Advertising Early: Whether personal or professional, you wait until your blog has achieved a level of success before you start advertising. Ads, whether they’re sponsorships, banners, contextual or other, tend to have a direct, negative impact on the number of readers who subscribe, add to favorites and link - you definitely don’t want that limitation while you’re still trying to get established. -
• Go Beyond Text in Your Posts: Blogs that contain nothing but line after line of text are more difficult to read and less consistently interesting than those that offer images, interactive elements, the occasional multimedia content and some clever charts & graphs
• Cover Topics that Need Attention: In every niche, there are certain topics and questions that are frequently asked or pondered, but rarely have definitive answers. While this recommendation applies to nearly every content-based site, it’s particularly easy to leverage with a blog. Spend the time and effort to research, document and deliver and you’re virtually guaranteed link-worthy content that will attract new visitors and subscribers. -
• Pay Attention to Your Analytics: Visitor tracking software can tell you which posts your audience likes best, which ones don’t get viewed and how the search engines are delivering traffic. Use these clues to react and improve your strategies.
• Archive Effectively: The best archives are carefully organized into subjects and date ranges. For search traffic (particularly long tail terms), it can be best to offer the full content of every post in a category on the archive pages, but from a usability standpoint, just linking to each post is far better (possibly with a very short snippet).
• Implement Smart URLs: The best URL structure for blogs is, in my opinion, as short as possible while still containing enough information to make an educated guess about the content you’ll find on the page. -
• Reveal as Much as Possible: The blogosphere is in love with the idea of an open source world on the web. Sharing vast stores of what might ordinarily be considered private information is the rule, rather than the exception. If you can offer content that’s usually private - trade secrets, pricing, contract issues, and even the occasional harmless rumor, your blog can benefit.
• Make Effective Use of High Traffic Days: If you do have linkbait, whether by design or by accident, make sure to capitalize. When you hit the front page of Digg, Reddit, Boing Boing, or, on a smaller scale, attract a couple hundred visitors from a bigger blog or site in your space, you need to put your best foot forward. Make sure to follow up on a high traffic time period with 2-3 high quality posts that show off your skills as a writer, your depth of understanding and let visitors know that this is content they should be sticking around to see more of. Nothing kills the potential linkbait “bump” faster than a blog whose content doesn’t update for 48 hours after they’ve received a huge influx of visitors. -
• Create Expectations and Fulfill Them: When you’re writing for your audience, your content focus, post timing and areas of interest will all become associated with your personal style. If you vary widely from that style, you risk alienating folks who’ve come to know you and rely on you for specific data. Thus, if you build a blog around the idea of being an analytical expert in your field, don’t ignore the latest release of industry figures only to chat about an emotional issue - deliver what your readers expect of you and crunch the numbers. This applies equally well to post frequency - if your blog regularly churns out 2 posts a day, having two weeks with only 4 posts is going to have an adverse impact on traffic.
• Build a Brand: Possibly one of the most important aspects of all in blogging is brand-building. As Zefrank noted, to be a great brand, you need to be a brand that people want to associate themselves with and a brand that people feel they derive value from being a member. Be careful to stick to your brand - once you have a definition that people like and are comfortable with, it’s very hard to break that mold without severe repercussions. If you’re building a new blog
Read the complete story on http://sanojjose79.blogspot.com/2010/01/become-rich-with-your-blogs.html
