If you are tired of the hustle and bustle of the nine to five or just tired of paying the high cost of commuter gas, then you may be interested in a change in your profession. Do you log on to the internet several times a day? Do you turn to your computer for everything? Why not turn to your computer to make a living? There are many different ideas floating around out there. With more and more people looking for a way to find work out of their own home, the internet is becoming a popular job site. Some people prefer to make money with sites that are already established online such as buying and selling goods at online auctions. The best way to create a steady income on the internet is to develop your own web page.
The first thing you need to figure out when you decide to venture into the world of online marketing, is the type of web site are you interested in designing. Whatever purpose you chose with your web site, be sure to be creative with the content. Unique web page content will stand out in the search engine results and draw more people to your site.
Whether you are planning to sell a product, host videos or post blogs, you will need to get your site recognized and generate a steady flow of traffic to your site. Search engine optimization consultants and software can be grand tools in determining the best ideas for traffic generation to your web site. Link building with partner sites is also a great way to generate income as well as attract visitors to your site.
In the blogging world, most bloggers have in mind who they’re hoping to reach. They have an imaginary audience in their head that they cater their topics and posts to. In reality, though, are the readers actually the same as the imaginary audience. How do you know if you’re reaching those who you intend to reach? What if you’re getting a lot of readers and hits but you’re just assuming that your audience is “X” when it’s really “O”? Having confirmation that you’re getting good readership is very satisfying, but if you knew your actual audience was a bit different than your assumption, wouldn’t that be helpful? You would be able to either tailor your blog to be a bit more specific to the readers you’re getting, or you could tweak your blog to be more interesting to the readers you were hoping for.
Online surveys are a tool to help you get the information you want—the demographics, opinions, and interests of those who are reading your blog. True, it’s not scientific by any means—you have no idea if the person answering the questions is being truthful or not—but it’s a start. And chances are, not everyone who takes the survey is going to be that interested in wasting their time only to lie and try to throw you a lot of bogus stuff. I mean, what’s the point? What satisfaction can there be had when they’ll never know how you react to their answers?
But surveys don’t always have the best reader: response ratios. So what can you do to drive up the chances that someone will answer your survey? Here are some ideas:
1. Give away a prize! The tastier the prize to a general audience, the better your chances of getting survey participants. Do a big build-up of what the prize is and then, “All you have to do is log in and take this short survey to be entered!”
2. Ask one question per post. This one could be tricky because you have no guarantee that the same people will come back each time. But it has the advantage of not overwhelming your readers if they’re only having to push a button/ make a click once.
3. Ask very specific questions.. You don’t want your readers to get overwhelmed with a lot of words or complicated questions. The more narrow and specific your question, the better. Yes/No answers, no more than 4 or 5 multiple choices, and leaving blanks are best. Those rank surveys (or, more scientifically, called Likert Scales) where you have to judge on a scale of 1-7, 1 being “the worst”, 7 being “the best), those take a long time and can be confusing because they’re aren’t very objective.
4. Use the results! As long as the results you get aren’t completely off-the-wall, seriously consider using the information you get to tweak your blog a bit. If you find out your readership is 80% women and you never tailor a post to that audience, you’re missing the point of collecting information in the first place.
Marketers from around the world have been using the human trait of sentimentality and gift giving as a way to make money. And why not? Birthdays, Anniversaries, Easter, Christmas, Mother’s and Father’s Days have become so commercialized and exploited that it is a marketer’s dream to capitalize on.
The usual form of advertising products that we are so familiar with is through trade shows, and handing out promotional items ranging from T shirts to mugs and calendars and even television and radio advertising promotions.
There are many, many ways of advertising. The newest way, online, is through the use of blogs. This can be a relatively cheap form of promoting any product or service through retail outlets.
Advertisers have budgets – be they small or grand. The less you spend on advertising the more profit you make on sales. This point alone has led me to Project Wonderful – a marvelous innovation where you place a bid to have your ad listed on a site.
Another “different” blog is in the form of a directory – Blogged.com It is unique in that it is focused on “locating” better blogs on which to advertise. This blog is like a search engine and it is categorized and rated by editors, so it can’t be manipulated and become a blog full of scams.
Everybody loves gifts, and when they come unexpectedly this just adds the vigour. Marketers worldwide have been thriving on this part of human nature for decades now by capitalizing on various promotional products and advertising specialties strategies. After all, ubiquitous household items like fridge magnets or calendars meet the eye every day, so why not make it a promotional calendar with your shiny logo or a fancy to-do-list promo magnet which will literally build your brand daily?
The usual distribution channel for promotional items is certainly trade shows. Organizing dedicated trade shows or just taking part in them with a few booths of your own is a great opportunity to spread your message across – in particular by handing our a bounty of promo items like mugs, calendars, bags, t-shirts or what not! It also helps greatly if these are offered by gorgeous “booth babes” – especially if you are in the automotive business!
Henry Ford once said, that good advertising can sell anything. Some may disagree with the business honcho, but there’s certainly no denying that bad advertising strategy can undermine even the best business idea on the planet! The gist: if advertising specialities have repeatedly proved their effectiveness, there is no way you can avoid using them if you are serious about your business!
As a marketer I am always looking for new opportunities to advertise and promote my websites. I use Adwords regularly, but it does tend to get expensive and it isn’t worth it for smaller sites. So I was hot on the lookout for a cheap yet effective form of advertising - and Project Wonderful fills that niche perfectly.
Project Wonderful is a simple advertising system - where you bid to place your ad on a site. And obvisouly the highest bidder wins. The price you bid is per day. For example on this blog - the top advertiser is paying just $0.06 per day. This is extremely cheap and provides an awesome CPC (Cost Per Click) and CPM (Cost per 1000 impressions).
As an advertiser, I have bid on over 200 blogs using the campaign feature, which does all the bidding automatically. You just set a budget, the blogs/sites you want to advertise on, and a daily limit and it does the rest. I spent around $100 on the campaign and received a great deal of exposure and traffic.
Like any advertising system, PW will take some practice to maximise your returns and I plan on using it more extensively in the future.
As promised here is the next weekly contest at Marketvice.com!
To enter all you have to do is right a review of Marketvice.com on your blog - it can be positive or negative! Just make it honest.
Next Week (Tuesday 4th March 2008) we will randomly choose a winner to take away our usual cash prize of $10 via PayPal.
Make sure you post a comment here with a link to your review so we can find you!
There sure isn’t a shortage of blog directories around. In fact it was only a little over a year ago when a great rush of directories opened up when the “make money online” blogging craze hit.
These overnight directories were marketed as a place to gain extra traffic and exposure to your blog - yet they were usually horribly designed and were not much benefit for to those actually looking to find blogs. In fact, I don’t believe there really is a good place to find blogs if you are a non-blogger.
But the newly launched Blogged.com seems a little different for a number of vital reasons. Number one, its not an offshoot of a bigger service or product. Therefore the directory is front and center and doesn’t require a myriad of clicks to get into. And secondly, the whole service is focused towards finding better blogs (emphasis of finding).
When I get back from my holiday I will sure will be signing up!
I have been away on a short holiday this weekend so I haven’t been able to post much however, I can post the winner of our current contest.
Thanks to everyone who entered by leaving a comment on this blog. Those blogs that had the “Scratchback” widget installed and entered the contest, either John or I have visited and left a donation as a way to say thanks.
But the winner of the $10 cash via PayPal goes to: Mirjam from MeMyselfandIBlog.com. We will be getting in touch soon with details on collecting your prize.
Stay tuned folks for a new weekly contest starting very soon.
TDNAM (The Domain Name After Market) is a place to purchase dropping and premium domain names. There are lots out there but here are a few with P.R. They cost $5 plus 1 year registration fee.
imgstorm.com (PR 2) - perfect for an image hosting site
partyfact.com (PR 2) - good for an entertainment blog or video sharing site.
faceology.net (PR 3) - maybe for a site reviewing Facebook apps?
Be quick, these domain auctions will only be active for another 12 0r so hours.
Remember this weeks contest - best comment wins $10 cash via PayPal. Just make a comment on this post or any future or past posts before the 22nd of February to be in the running. Find out more here.
I know what you’re thinking - another post about how to monetize a blog. Whats New! Well i got together with co-contributer John Davis to come up with some creative ways to monetize a blog without selling your soul to PayPerPost or filling your blog full of ads. In fact - where going against the trend and reccommending a completely different approach.
How many blogs a chocked full of advertising, affiliate banners, text ads, sponsored posts and adsense! Aren’t there any better and more attractive ways to monetize a blog? Here are some different (funky) ways to monetize a blog:
Background Advertising
Turn your entire background into an advertisement! CollegeHumor and Perez Hilton use this method all the time and it works really well. Funnily enough it isn’ that “in your face” and is often done extremely tastefully. And yes there is an ad network dedicated to just this type of advertising - AdCamo.
404 Goldmine
Whats wrong with chucking up a few affiliate links on a 404 page. Usually a 404 page, just tells users they are looking for something that isn’t there - so why not tell them that as well as telling them about a great new affiliate product! This is unobtrusive and making good use of otherwise wasted pageviews and space.
IndieKarma
Ok so this hasn’t taken off - but if it does you can thank me. With IndieKarma you install a little widget on your website and other IK users can choose to donate, say, $0.01 everytime the visit your blog. Doesn’t sound like much but imagine if just 50% of your readers paid you everytime they visited your blog. IndieKarma is still young so they giving away $1 to the first 5000 users who register. IK = a great way to say thanks for good content and earn $$$
Spin Off Products
Don’t just promote someone elses products through affiliate links, make your own! Lots of bloggers have created there own ebooks, software, reports, membership sites etc. Loyal readers equal customers more often then not. Take a look at the not yet complete 10DollarScripts being built by my business partner John Davis that will one day be an extension of the blog.
Rent Out Your Blog
Don’t want to sell you beloved blog that you have spent the last 12 months building up? Well rent it out. Sure its a daunting thought - letting someone else have control of your blog. But don’t worry, like any good landlord you should set some clear terms. ie. number of posts, don’t mess with the links, design etc. This is perfect for holidays! If you’re going on a break, instead of finding guest posters just find a tenant.
Build a Jobs Board
This one is for the bigger blogs. Adding a jobs board is a real simple way to monetize a blog. And thanks to Job-a-matic, a point and click board creator used by many big blogging brands, you can create one in minutes.
Give Your Content A Voice
Odiogo will turn your blog posts into high quality audio files with ads! Therefore you earn $$$ every time someone listens to your blog. Not only will you expand your blogs reach you will be profiting from the move as well.
Remember this weeks contest - best comment wins $10 cash via PayPal. Just make a comment on this post or any future or past posts before the 22nd of February to be in the running. Find out more here.