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1 © Blogging to the Bank Blogging to the Bank 2010 Edition The Blueprint of a Blogging Millionaire By Rob Benwell 2 © Blogging to the Bank www.BloggingtotheBank.com Copyright Information Information in this document is the property of www.bloggingtothebank.com No part of this document may be duplicated, transmitted, resold or reproduced in any form or by any means without prior written permission from www.bloggingtothebank.com. Unauthorized duplication of this material in any form is strictly prohibited. Violators will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. If you have any information regarding the illegal re-selling or duplication of this document please report it to copyright@bloggingtothebank.com for your reward. Disclaimer www. bloggingtothebank.com assume no responsibility for the use or misuse of this product, or for any injury, damage and/or financial loss sustained to persons or property as a result of using this report. We cannot guarantee your future results and/or success as there are some unknown risks in business and on the internet that we cannot foresee. The use of our information should be based on your own due diligence, and you agree that our company is not liable for any success or failure of your business that is directly or indirectly related to the purchase and use of our information. 3 © Blogging to the Bank Contents • Introduction 4 • Updates in the Blogosphere 5 • The 5 Blogging Commandments For 2010 6 • The Blogging to the Bank Million Dollar Blueprint - Market Research & Keyphrase Lists 7 - Domains & Hosting 13 - Creating Your Blog 17 - Optimizing Your Blog 23 - Content 34 - Promotion & Backlinks 38 - Advanced SEO Techniques 43 - Web 2.0 Strategies 45 - Outsourcing & Building Your Blog Empire 59 - Selling Your Blog 61 • How To Get Thousands Of Link For Free 63 • The Sneaky Theme Sponsor Trick 64 • The Bloggers Tool Kit 65 • Make Money From This Ebook 66 • Final Words 67 4 © Blogging to the Bank Introduction The Million Dollar Blogger is back with another edition of Blogging to the Bank. This time it’s the 2010 edition and the system has been tested and tweaked, techniques and methods have been added and others have been deleted. Since it’s launch in 2006 Blogging to the Bank versions 1 2.0 and 3.0 have sold over 30,000 copies and there’s been thousands of success stories from people making anything from a couple of hundred dollar extra to people now running seven figure businesses. If you have any of the other editions of Blogging to the Bank then a couple of things will be familiar with you and you’ll have no problem flying through the system and creating highly profitable blogs that could be worth tens of thousands of dollars. However… If you’re new to Blogging to the Bank then first let me introduce myself. My name is Rob Benwell and I live in the north of the UK. I’m 24 years old and have been blogging since I was 20 making over a million dollars in the process. Now you’ve discovered my latest blueprint for creating successful blogs as well as advanced blogging techniques that you can put to use to turbo charge your blogs. I’ve split the blueprint up so it is easy to jump from section to section. This should make it easier for new bloggers to get started and also for serious bloggers who know some of the blueprint steps to get their teeth into the advanced methods without having to read every word of this ebook. The main thing you need to remember when reading this eye opening information is that you absolutely must take some action after you have read this. It doesn’t matter if it’s 3 in the morning and you’re alarm will be going off in a few hours. By just starting and taking a small step it will make it so much easier to continue and build up on. So let’s get started… 5 © Blogging to the Bank Updates In The Blogosphere It’s been 5 years since I started blogging and just short of 4 years since the original Blogging to the Bank ebook was released. A lot changes year to year on the internet and the same goes when it comes to blogging. Things come and things go, and as this edition has show, things return! The fundamentals of this system are still set in stone are unlikely to change much at all. However some of the tips, shortcuts and evolution of new technologies leave new areas to be explored and for us to cash in on. First, here’s the big changes I’ve seen in the past year since the last Blogging To The Bank instalment. If you missed them you need to know about them in order to maximise your blogs potential. • Twitter – The mass popularity of the micro blogging service has lead to a whole new way to blog and interact with your readers. Make sure you check out the Twitter section to find out the best practices for using Twitter and also get a free bonus Twitter course. • Free Blogs Are Back – You remember that only in the last update that I said that these were “Dead”, we’ll they’re back. Not in the traditional way though, you still need to own your blogs but there is a very creative way in which we can use these free blogging services along with authoritative web 2.0 properties like Hub Pages and Squidoo. As well as these two new features to the system you will also see that the approach to building your blog empire has changed. This has improved the speed in which you have your empire up and running and can also lower the initial lay out you may invest. This has been developed to help people struggling with the recession to make the most out of their blogs at very little cost. 6 © Blogging to the Bank The 5 Blogging Commandments For 2010 1) Personality! It is still the number 1 thing that any blog needs. Make sure your blog has some as you’ll want to engage your readers and make them relate to you or the character you create. By having a likable personality when writing it will be more interesting that a dull and boring blog. You can engage the reader through competitions, questions/asking for comments and by just writing about interesting stories, techniques and ideas. 2) Make It Sticky – Your blog should have people coming back to it and reading it again and again. Make sure you include a RSS feed so visitors can subscribe and receive updates. Also opt-in newsletters that offer more than just updates are a good idea but the number one way to get people to come back is to offer excellent likable content that is kept up to date (this also means keeping it spam free). 3) Maximise Your Blogs Revenue – By making sure your blog earns every penny it can it will mean less work creating new blogs to increase your revenue. Since Blogging to the Bank 3.0 there’s been a bit of a change in the formula I use when it comes to monetization and this revolves around the new method of the 2 type blogging. This allows you to create authoritative blogs while still earning money from the very first month you get started. This strategy will be discussed further inside. 4) Don’t Give Up – I get emails every week from people ready to quit because of various reasons including… They can’t set their blog up, Google dropped their PageRank, Earnings are slumping and even because they’re earning too much and work is piling up. There will be hard times on your journey but you must not give up. I’ve come close to giving up many times but always remember that I shouldn’t because for every bad day I’ll have 20 good days where I’ll be amazed at how much money is been made and how much fun it all is. Stick to it and you’ll have success. 5) Don’t let your blog die. Sell it instead – I’ve seen huge differences in blogs that are kept updated and offers that don’t get new posts. You don’t have to post every day or even every week but make sure you don’t just set them up and forget about them because they will die off and lose traffic… If you are having problems managing all you blogs, keep your best ones and sell the others. You should always be looking to sell some of your blogs for the right amount as this will increase your income and wealth. 7 © Blogging to the Bank The Blogging to the Bank Million Dollar Blueprint Step 1 – Market Research & Keyphrase Lists Market Research is crucial and you need to spend time selecting your market and building your keyphrase lists. Rush this stage and you could end up doing lots of work for nothing so follow along closely. The first thing you need to decide is whether you are going to target an affiliate product or rely on adsense and advertising to generate money. Different people prefer different ways to monetize their blogs but I’ve always had more success with affiliate programs over Adsense. However… Over the last year or two there’s been a huge growth in blog advertising and review style advertising so even blogs that wouldn’t be able to make good money two years ago can do ok now. Going the affiliate program way also lets you gauge the market and see how profitable it is in case you’d like to sell your own product in it sometime in the future. So if you want to set up a blog to promote mainly affiliate programs here’s the steps to take to uncover the best markets. The first thing you need to do is broad list your potential affiliate programs by making a list of the ones having success. I prefer promoting Clickbank products because of the high payout on each sale. You can promote a range of info products and physical goods from your blog using affiliate programs on Commission Junction, eJunkie and Amazon and other popular retailers but for starting out I’d recommend Clickbank. So you first need to head over to the Clickbank marketplace which has thousands of info products in it. Spend a few hours browsing through all the categories and sub categories. There’s no need to go more than 2 or 3 pages deep in any sub-category because most of the successful sites will be on the first page with a few smaller niche products on the second and third. If you want to spend some time on the research phase then it’s a good idea to track new products on Clickbank and watch for any climbing the marketplace from pages 4 and 5 and 8 © Blogging to the Bank then snap them up to promote as soon as they hit the third page. This has been a very successful method I’ve found to avoid competition while still having great conversions. Once you’ve found some affiliate programs you need to check the stats to narrow them down. The 2 main stats to look for are: • %/sale which needs to be at least 50% but you need to look for programs that pay 65% and above for best results. • %refd which is the percentage of sales generated by affiliates. You’re wanting this 60+ or even 70+ with the only exception of if the product is new and affiliates aren’t yet promoting it. In the past I’ve only aimed at products with high gravities but from testing I’ve seen even low gravity products sell very well… it just depends on the market you are aiming at. Using these guide lines you can make a list of products you’d consider promoting on your blog. The next step is to evaluate the amount of search engine traffic you can drive to your blog. Now traffic will come from more places than just the search engine but this is one of the easiest ways to evaluate the phrases your potential market searches for. You can do this using free software like Wordtracker: http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com 9 © Blogging to the Bank or my new favourite tool the Google Keyword Tool: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal An excellent resource I like to use is MSN Ad Center. If you don’t have an account you can set one up for just $5 and because MSN is the first search engine your blog will appear in you can see numbers just for the MSN search engine. I’d suggest you use one of the first software pieces along with the MSN results. What you need to do is now search for a few broad keywords relating to the potential market. These can be found in the product title and in the websites of the products. e.g. Dog Training Secrets ebook broad keyword would be dog training Here’s the results you’ll see from Wordtracker… (You can see many 3 and 4 word keyphrases getting searches from this broad keyword) And here are the results from the Google Keyword Tool for the same broad keyword: 10 © Blogging to the Bank (Again you can see lots of 3 and 4 word keyphrases) One great advantage of the Google Keyword Tool is the “Additional keywords to be considered” section just below the first set of results. This section plays a huge roll in helping you rank better in Google by using LSI. We will discuss this more in the content section of this book. Here’s a snap shot from the MSN Ad Center: 11 © Blogging to the Bank Without traffic your blog will never even get going so it is the life of your blog. Numbers alone aren’t enough. Here’s the 3 things you need to see with the above research. • The main 5 keyphrases need to add up to at least 300 on Wordtracker, 500 on MSN and 5,000 on Google but the more searches the better. • You can find more than 5 long tail keyphrases. these are 4 words at least. • Some keyphrases are related to the actual problem the product solves. You can also get an understanding of the phrases the market is searching for which leads us on to the next part of the research to qualify affiliate products. Now you know what the market is searching for you need to see if there are advertisers spending money on Pay Per Click ads for those keyphrases. The best place to do this is Google. Simply type in your keyphrase using “ before and ” after the phrase. e.g. “planning a beach wedding in san diego” Now on the right hand side you’ll see all the advertisers paying money for clicks from this keyphrase… You MUST see some advertisers for your main keyphrases. If there aren’t advertisers then it’s a red flag because it shows the market isn’t very profitable. You’re also looking for the info product you’ll be promoting. The best possible thing you can see is that most of the ads on the first page are info products and mainly the one you’re 12 © Blogging to the Bank looking to promote. (This will also give you an indication of other product in that niche you can promote, which may convert better). Now if you see just one or two ads for that product on the first page then it’s great news and you can short list this market. From the 3 methods above you can easily select a few winning markets to base your blog on and have a few strong affiliate products to promote. Now earlier we talked about just having Adsense or Advertising on your blog. If this is the case then you don’t need to worry about the affiliate program side of things. The main research that qualifies a good market for you is something that can get you good traffic and that has lots of advertisers paying on Google and other Blogs. 13 © Blogging to the Bank Step 2 - Domains & Hosting First thing I’ll say is that if you’re advanced, have a good reliable web host you’re happy with and can install WordPress quickly then you can skip this chapter. However if you don’t like running installs or are new and looking for a excellent webhost then this is important. WARNING: Don’t use free blogs or free web hosting as you’re not in control of your blogs and they could be taken down or deleted any day. It’s very important that you own your blogs and are in full control of both the domain name and the hosting account where the files are stored. When you get to the later stages of this system you’ll have the option to sell your blog for big money but it’s important you are in full control… else problems will arise. This costs money but not that much. It is well worth it once you have a few money making blogs. The Domain & Web Host Combo This is the traditional way get started, you head over to a web host, (I have listed some recommendations below), and choose your domain name and the package you want all from the same supplier. Its easy to mange and usually cost effective. You shouldn’t run into problems but sometimes you do with the lesser know or new hosting companies who come and go. To combat this go with one of the recommended big names below, so use my... Total Control Method This is where you use a separate domain registrar to keep track of your domain names (I use Godaddy – http://godaddy.com), and a separate company to host the files (recommendations below). This is great as you are always in control of your domains and as long as you back up (covered later in the book) on a regular basis, it doesn’t matter if the hosting company you use disappear or have major server errors. It is easy to sign up elsewhere and upload you back up and point your domain to the new hosting service. 14 © Blogging to the Bank The Recommendations I’ve tried many different web hosts over the year and I’ve been happy with a few and not with others but all of the ones listed below are ones I currently use and have no hesitation in recommending to anyone: JustHost Hostgator Go grab your domain and a hosting account now… You only need a starter package if you are starting your first blog and remember you can also upgrade at a later date. Domain Starter Boost The domain starter boost is a new method I have only been using for the last 12 months, it works slightly differently with the 2 types of blogs I now create. I will explain this more next but first lets look at how the domain start boost works. What we do is buy an existing domain rather than registering a new one. Now this is of benefit to us as an older domain is preferred by the search engines. This will help us get better rankings when we start our SEO. Follow these general domain buying tips where you are registering new or looking to buy existing domains: • Make it relevant to your blog. • Include your main keyword (broad at least, specific is better). • Keep it as short as possible. • Do not mis-type words or use letter to represent words. A user should be able to type in a domain and get to the site without after only hearing it once. It you have to spell out your domain name every time someone asks about your blog you are going to lose visitors. • The one exception to the above rule is if you go for something short and snappy, like a branded name or slogan. These domain are usually easy to remember but compromise search engine placing as they do not often contain many keywords. Now you know what you’re looking for in a domain you can go register a new one. But if you are wanting that starter boost we mentioned earlier then you will also want a domain that is aged. The older the better, but this will usually be reflected in the price. Finding an old domain name isn’t the end of it, we also need to make sure what else has been on the domain in the past. For this I use a little tool called the Way Back Machine and is located here: 15 © Blogging to the Bank http://www.archive.org/ Simple add the domain into the search box and you can see snap shots of what the site looked like on various dates. You need for the domain either not to have been used or for it to have been used specifically for sites related to what your blog will be about. This benefits us because: 1. Links previous owners have built will still be relevant. 2. People who used the site in the past will generate us some free traffic. 3. The search engines will have indexed this content and related it to this domain. If you add content based on different keywords you will probably get dropped from any search engine rankings the domain had and start from scratch. Now we’re looking for a bonus. Page Rank. Page Rank is a rating system by Google ranging from 1-10. How this is worked out nobody knows for sure (except Google) but all you really need to understand is that the higher the Page Rank the more money you can earn. Page Rank is updated sporadically throughout the year so you could be sat with a new blog for 6 months before you see it given a ranking. Alternatively this can happen quite quick if you land on an update shortly after getting your site fully operationally. This is where we can now save some major time. When buying a domain for the starter boost method you need to be identifying ones with Page Rank. Again the higher the better but as the page rank rises so will the Cost. Here are some places you can buy Page Ranked Domains: http://ebay.com http://forums.digitalpoint.com (in the buy/sell forums) http://marketplace.sitepoint.com/categories/domain-names http://freshdrop.net Once you have purchased a domain name you will need the seller to “push” you the domain. This is a very simple process but you will need an account at the relevant registrar. A high percentage of people use Godaddy and even if the domain isn’t registered on Godaddy they offer a service where for a small charge you can transfer it to them. 16 © Blogging to the Bank This is well worth the small fee to keep all your domains together. Once the seller has pushed the domain you will need to accept the transfer. Or if you have transferred it from another registrar the seller will be emailed a confirmation code which you will need to obtain, then just follow the instructions in the email Godaddy send. 17 © Blogging to the Bank Step 3 – Creating a Blog Short Term & Long Term Blogging First things first. You will have already read about the 2 types of blogging I have talked about. So before we go any further I will explain what I mean. In the last 12 months I have developed a new strategy that I never used before in Blogging To The Bank. It allowed me to reach six figures from my empire a lot faster while actually LOWER my out lay.... ...and it revolves around mixing two approaches to blogging. Here’s how it works. Your first blog in your empire is a little like a pawn on a chess board, it has its use but it doesn’t last very long. The same will go for your first blog. The benefits this first blog will give you (especially if this is the first time you have blogged or created a site), is that it will: • Give you the blogging experience. • Learn you how to use Wordpress. • Learn you how to manage your blog. • Allow you to make errors that do not matter. • Allow you to make money and see how the process works. • Show you how profitable selling blogs can be. At the end of the day we are going to sell it. I like to refer to this type of blog as the Short Term Blog or STB It allows us to try anything and everything without a care as to what the end result is. It also lets you find out which programs are most suitable for your niche. Something you do or promote on this blog will no doubt generate bad feedback or possible backlash from other blogs or the search engines. That’s all OK. Because at the same time we are going to be creating a Long Term Blog or LTB. This will run along side the Short Term Blog but will contain the better information, have better design etc. It will not just run any old ad program or promote any product. It will 18 © Blogging to the Bank instead work its way to be a valuable and trusted resource for your visitors and in turn will become and authoritative site in its niche. To summarise... Characteristics of a STB Short terms blogs: • Are placed on free or cheap page rank domain names, (nothing above page rank 4). • Are made up of sponsored posts and free PLR articles or quick lesser quality posts. • Will have a free template design that can be customized for free. • Will earn money from contextual advertising (e.g. Adsense etc.), link sales and sponsored posts (ranging from $5 to $100). • Involves little or no SEO & traffic generation. • Will be sold (flipped) after hitting a income level from $50 up. (Selling for no less than $300). Characteristics of a LTB Long term blogs: • Are placed on new or purchased keyword specific domains with any level of page rank (the higher the better). • Are not monetized for the first month. • Will have customized free templates or preferable unique custom designs and branding. • Will earn money from affiliate programs, highly paid sponsored posts ($100+) and high end link sales. • Has focussed SEO and Traffic strategies. • Will earn income levels of over $500 per month before selling. So let’s set up our first blog... If you want to set up a blog on making money, blogging, affiliate and traffic generation tips and you’re not too technical and would like our team to set you a blog up for free then just visit the site below: http://www.bloggingtothebanksites.com 19 © Blogging to the Bank If you want to set up your own site and are using the recommended web hosting (or any that runs cpanel) then it’s really simple and takes just two minutes Just log in to your Cpanel account (e.g. www.yourdomain.com/cpanel) using your username and password you received from your hosting provider. Then on that opening screen scroll down to the bottom and click on the Fantastico icon: (If you do not see this you should get in touch with your web host and ask them to add it to your account) This will bring up a full list of software options you can install. First Select ‘WordPress’ and then select ‘New Installation’ 20 © Blogging to the Bank Then you’ll see this screen where you need to enter the details of your blog and create a username and password etc. (Blogs are best set up on the homepage of your domain so leave the ‘directory’ blank) Then click ‘Install WordPress’ and then follow the last few on screen steps to install your blog. Now your basic blog is installed on the domain and we need to customize it. Customizing Your Blog The first thing we want to change is the theme from the standard blue wordpress one. You can get different themes for free that fit into your market or just something different at the WordPress theme library: http://themes.wordpress.net Or if you want something special where you can create a full site from WordPress without having to know any coding then you can use WordPress Remix which is a tool I’ve been playing around with and think it’s a must for the serious blogger: 21 © Blogging to the Bank http://www.wpremix.com There are videos and instructions on the site along with a support forum so you’ll be in good hands over there if you want to build full blown authority sites using WordPress. This is the method I would strongly suggest for your Long Term Blogs. Once you download the files for a new theme you may need to unzip/extract them. This can be done by right clicking on the folder and selecting ‘unzip’ or ‘extract all’ Then after you’ve done this you’ll need to upload this folder into your theme folder. To upload files to your website you’ll need an ftp client. I recommend www.coreftp.com as its reliable, virus free and doesn’t cost you a penny. So if you download Core Ftp and open it up. Then you need to put your account details into the program like below: Then once you’re clicked “Connect” and logged in you need to locate the theme folder on your site by expanding the directories: Public_html > wp-content > themes And drag the folder into this directory. 22 © Blogging to the Bank Now you need to log-in to your WordPress admin panel to activate the blog theme by going to: http://www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin (using the log in details you set up in Fantastico) Once in you need to click on the ‘Presentation’ link on the left hand side and then click on the name of the blog theme you’ve just uploaded which will activate the theme. 23 © Blogging to the Bank Step 4 – Optimizing the Blog Now you’ve created your blog you need to optimize your blog. This isn’t just for the search engines but you need to optimize every blog in 3 ways: • Reader Optimization – The easier and more enjoyable your blog is the more sticky it will become. Remember getting an existing reader to come back is 10 times easier than generating a new reader. • Search Engine Optimization – You need to make sure your blog is easily crawled and indexed by the search engines for maximum exposure and heaps of free traffic. • Monetization – You blog needs to make sure it isn’t losing potential dollars by having it poorly monetized. These methods used will explain which are better for the Short & Long Term Blogs. So lets start with the first one… Reader Optimization Put yourself in the readers position. Do you want to see the basic template with no extra’s. It looks like every other junk blog around. The visitor will leave. You have just 7 seconds to make that important first impression with your blog and it must be good to stop the visitor clicking the back button. Now we’ve already taken care of the first step of solving this problem by changing the theme or using WPRemix to create a unique looking site. We can take this to the next level by getting unique graphics, logos and branding done for our Long Term Blogs. This not only helps readers remember the site and come back for more but can also help with monetization. There are plenty of graphics designers out there and with the tools now available to everyone you no longer need to hire an agency to carry out this work. You will find plenty of graphics/branding solutions on these sites: http://forums.digitalpoint.com http://sitepoint.com http://elance.com http://guru.com Here’s a few other things you also need to do: You need to add the RSS Reader icons so that users can subscribe to your blog in there RSS Reader. This is very important and easy to do so here’s a quick guide to do this… 24 © Blogging to the Bank First you need to download the plugin: http://www.twistermc.com/blog/chicklet-creator-plugin There are simple instructions on that website on how to get it working. Once you have the plug-in activated you get to select the icons you want displayed. I personally like to add most of them in the sidebar but make sure you at least add the main ones like yahoo, msn, Google, technorati etc. The next thing you need to do is add an email subscription form to the sidebar of your blog. When I first got started with blogging I never used to collect email addresses which was a huge mistake. This one method is responsible for at least an extra six figures (yes, over $100,000) from my blogs because I have built lists of up to 25,000 people in many niches that I can email an offer every few weeks. Now getting this form on your blog will involve copy and pasting some code but I’ve made very detailed steps below to ensure you don’t go wrong. The very first thing you need is an autoresponder account. If you don’t have one then I’d recommend using Getresponse as they have the highest delivery rate and I personally have never encounted a problem with them. Here’s the link to get an account: http://www.getresponse.com/ Then you need to create a new campaign and add a ‘thanks for subscribing’ email that will get sent out right away. This is also a great place to recommend a product or website or even some existing posts in your blog. SIDENOTE: In Getresponse go into the manage campaigns and then campaign settings on the sub menu. Click on the 4th tab across (contact settings) and down to the Opt-In section.. Make sure you untick Web Subscriptions as if you don’t your subscribers will have to double opt-in which will lower response. After your campaign is created you need to go to ‘Contacts’ on the top bar and then ‘Web Forms” on the sub menu. Then click “Click Here To Create A New Web Form”. Here you can quickly create a simple web form. This brings up the following page: 25 © Blogging to the Bank Both the Confirmation Page and Error Page should be your blogs homepage. Enter this info and then click ‘Next Step’ You’ll be given some naming options on the next page, just choose what text you would like and click to the next and final step. You are now given some code, you need to select all this and copy it for pasting into your blog template. To do this log into Wordpress admin panel and navigate to the widgets section. Add a new text widget and copy the code into it. You can then save and exit and you will see your opt-in form on your blogs sidebar. I find this way to be the simplest way but you can also open up the theme editor in the Wordpress admin panel or use a HTML editor. To do this in an HTML editor: Open up your theme’s sidebar.php code in the web page editor like Dreamweaver or MS Frontpage. 26 © Blogging to the Bank This is the code you’ll see (default theme): Above the ‘Archives’ header place the autoresponder form code. Then you can save this page and overwrite your existing one by using your FTP Client like earlier. That wasn’t too hard was it and it’ll guarantee long term growth of your blog and your business because you can keep emailing subscribers every time you add an article or post a product review etc. The only issue with this method is that most reliable Auto Responders do cost money and usually its a monthly fee. 27 © Blogging to the Bank This is why I have come up with a great alternative method which will guarantee you get your readers back. Although is it still better to have an Auto Responder, especially for your LTB’s this method can be used until you reach an income level that allows you to take that cost out of profits or can still run along side the Auto Responder to give a better return rate. The method is simple and it used both Twitter & Facebook. Twitter we will cover in detail later in the book as it is a very powerful tool for bloggers for many reasons. On Facebook set up an account for your site. Using the sites name as the persons name. This was people can friend request you. To get the initial grow post a blog entry about it and also include the Facebook growth updates as part of general blog updates until you are at a level where you keep seeing new sign ups even when you are not blogging about the new Facebook group. Make sure you post relevant short status updates to your account but most importantly post when you add new content. A simple status update with the words “New Blog Post: Title of Blog Post” and then a link to the individual blog post will generate instant clicks and views from people who spend more time on Facebook than checking their email of RSS readers. Twitter works in a very similar way, where you Tweet that you have a new blog post up and this way you are attracting people who use one, or both of these services as their main social networking site. To make your blog more user friendly to your readers you can also do many other things but to start with these are the main factors of Reader Optimization. Search Engine Optimization Making your blog search engine friendly is a must to get highly ranked and bring in streams of new readers. However I’m not going to talk too much about over the top techniques here as when you’re building a long term blog you’ll want to make sure you don’t use any techniques that can hurt your blog’s rankings. This is part of the reason for introducing the short term blogs. You can test the methods out on these if you think they may be borderline black hat (not above board). Now I’m not saying Black Hat SEO is bad or anything but it does have its place and it’s not on a long term blog that you’re going to put time into. 28 © Blogging to the Bank What we do need to do is... The very first thing you need to do to optimize your blog for the search engines is make sure your Blog’s title and tagline sections are filled in correctly. To do this go to options section in your control panel and in general options you’ll see right at the top your Weblog title and Tagline. You need to make sure your main keyphrases are in these as the search engines will pick this content up. The next thing you need to check is your Permalinks structure. This needs to be set to custom and the custom structure needs to be: /%postname%/ 29 © Blogging to the Bank This is because the search engines give more weight to folders closer your root directory and when you have the link structure set as: /%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/ You’ll see that an extra 3 folders have been created meaning the post is deeper and as the search engines see it, not as important. Now this is all the basic SEO we need to do on all our blogs. There are a few advanced techniques you can use like latent semantic indexing (LSI) for content and also deep linking but these are mainly for the Long Term Blogs so will cover them later in the blueprint. At this stage you can also tidy your site up, especially the side bar as depending on the theme you have chosen you will have a number of unwanted items placed there. To remove them just open up the widgets menu and remove them, if there is nothing in the widgets menu adding a blank text field will normally re-set the sidebar blank. If this fails it will mean opening up the sidebar.php file in either the Wordpress admin panel theme editor or in an HTML editor. Monetization Are you going to monetize your blog using affiliate programs, private advertising or adsense or even all? Not sure, well here’s your guide: You already have your opt-in form but you need to make sure your blog drives attention and readers to it. Like I said earlier, it’s not good enough to just have a keep updated pitch for your opt-in it needs to be more like: “Get The Latest Dog Training Updates Direct From Me And If Your One Of The Next 17 People To Subscribe For Free You’ll Receive The Secrets To Your Dog’s Behavior Video Totally Free Of Charge. Just Enter Your First Name And Email Below For More The Download Link” You really need to make sure you sell your free offer and you can even make a post or two now and again about your free offer and how they get a secret gift for joining. Right, we have the opt-in offer ready and now we need to monetize your blog as much as possible as you want as much money from each of your blogs as you can get. SIDENOTE: Affiliate Programs and Private Advertising have always made more money than Adsense for me and also a few serious bloggers I know doing six figures. So Adsense is great 30 © Blogging to the Bank if there are a lack of affiliate programs or private advertisers but not as a main way to monetize your blog. Both types of blogs (STBs & LTBs) should have multiple income streams, this not only increase the revenue but also prevents the income drying up if one method becomes stale or certain sites close down or de-index your site. Things however from here are different for the two types of blogs so read these carefully. Affiliate Programs Networks like ClickBank, CJ.com, eJunkie.com and even private affiliate programs like the Amazon one give you a great opportunity to monetize your blog from the start before you can approach and get approached by private advertisers. My favourite Affiliate network is Clickbank.com as if offers products to promote across all kinds of markets and they usually pay at least 50% and even up to 75% which is much better than the 5% some other programs pay on different networks. Just go join up for a Clickbank account and start searching the Marketplace for products to promote. STBs: Try out new products here before moving them up to the LTB in the same niche. Also look for cheaper products or ones that offer a higher payout % for digital product or look to promote very popular and new physical products from the likes of Amazon. You can use simple text links and images to promote these products. LTBs: Aim for the more well known, higher end products and ones you have tested on your STBs. Aim to promote these mainly with banners and in depth reviews with images to back up your recommendation. Text Link Sales One of the easiest ways I’ve found to get a blog earning more money is selling text links on it. As soon as your blog has visitors, PageRank or/and a good Alexa rank then you’ll find people willing to pay money for a link on your Blogroll or at the footer of your blog. I like to sell my links on forums. The best one is: http://forums.digitalpoint.com (in the buy/sell links forum) I also sell links on other forums and also use the service by text-link-ads.com which automates the process of adding links using their plug-in. STBs: Consider short term unrelated links if the price is right, the main focus is maximum income in a short period of time. Try to set up monthly subscriptions via paypal or deals 31 © Blogging to the Bank where money is passed over monthly for the links. This will help when it comes to selling the blog as income can still be expected to roll in from sales work already done. Also register at Text Link Ads as soon as your site has Page Rank. This is ideal if you have purchased a PR3 or 4 domain to place your STB on. Again this is monthly income so buyers can expect this revenue to continue with no work on their behalf. LTBs: Only accept relevant links to your niche. Also make your adspace premium and limit the number of out bound links on your site. Charge more for fewer links and look to strike up long term deals by offering discounts. Look to use one of the ad management plug ins suggested in the Blogging Resources section to provide advertisers with stats and renewal notices. Only register for Text-Link-Ads when your site has hit PR3 and is in the top 200k of Alexa. This will generate much more interest and a high monthly price per link. Private Sponsors & Banner Ads I’m sure you’ve noticed the move over the last year or 2 towards those little 125 x 125 ads you see on most blogs. These are sometimes referred to as a Blog’s sponsors or Recommendations. They are one form of banner advertising on your blog you can sell along with skyscraper ads, leaderboards and even the 250x250 square inserted into a blog posts… You can sell any type of banner ad as long as it fits in your blog theme. Banner advertising on blogs is becoming big business and popular blogs are charging up to $10k per month for a little 125x125 ad… And you can have 6 to 8 of these on your blog’s sidebar. You can sell them in forums and marketplaces along with selling then direct from your blog i.e. having the ‘advertise here’ graphic on your blog. STBs: Aim to fill 8 of the 125x125 spots as soon as possible, try to sell these for a higher price for a longer period of time, but make a deal so that it works out cheaper than paying month by month. For example, if you were going to charge $20 per month per spot, then get someone to sign up for 6 months for $100 (getting 1 month free). This makes management a lot easier and you don’t have to keep going in and taking ads down or swapping them every month. LTBs: For long term blogs stick to 4 until you fill them then add an additional 2. Only add 8 if demand requires it. Keep these exclusive but make sure you are still selling some, even if you have to offer some for a lower price. Make sure you provide stats information once you start charging over $100 per spot and use a management plug in as mentioned before for billing and renewals. 32 © Blogging to the Bank TIP: Add in the first 2 spots as soon as you set up your blog with the remaining ones being left as either advertise here or blank. These can be banners for affiliate offers and not only will they generate some revenue for you but will also lead potential advertisers into thinking they might miss out if the spots fill up without them jumping on board quickly. Keep adding a new one every few days until you are left with 1 advertise here spot that you leave open for people to click to purchase advertising. Even if the spots are full you at least want to strike up a conversation with a potential buyer so you can get in touch when a spot becomes available or let them know about spaces available on your other blogs. Paid Reviews First mentioned in Blogging to the Bank 2.0 and now has grown into a huge industry is paying for a blogger to review your product or website. It’s a great way to create buzz and launch a site. Here’s 4 great sites to sign up at to get paid to review products and services: www.payperpost.com www.reviewme.com www.sponsoredreviews.com www.socialspark.com There are also plenty more. STBs: Register as soon as your blog meets the minimum requirements and take any opportunity available. This can soon add up from placing a couple of posts per week easily generate $50 per month from this income stream alone. This works great for blogs that are set up on PR2-3 domains as you can attract multiple $20 per post opportunities per week and get paid upto $80 per post without having to look too hard. The key to making this work is having some back up posts in your blog saved as drafts. These can be simple PLR articles that you can place between sponsored posts so you can take more than 1 the same day. LTBs: Only register when your blog hits PR3 and is in the top 200k of Alexa. Only take relevant opportunities and aim mainly for Sponsored Reviews & Review Me. These sites offer many $250 - $500 per post jobs. 33 © Blogging to the Bank Make sure not to take too many sponsored posts in a short period of time. They key to this method is to feed them in without your readers realising you are being paid for your “opinion” so they keep coming back and listen to your expert opinion. The better you perform for an advertiser the more likely they will come directly back to you and approach you with a long term link deal. Google Adsense You may already have an Adsense account and I’m sure if so you’ve seen how easy it is to run totally hand free but earnings aren’t as good as the other monetization strategies. However… If you have a very high traffic blog in a niche that has high paying keywords then it’s always worth testing a few ads spots on your blog for extra income. STBs: Place Adsense on sites where you are seeing high levels of traffic. Add the code in the content as well as above each post on the main page. LTBs: Only aim Adsense at Long Term Blogs that are very high in traffic and are not making many affiliate sales or attracting reviews. Adsense work well for boths types of blogs that are PR0. So these are the main ways to monetize your blog and you can also monetize all of your blogs with the Blogging to the Bank affiliate program which I’ll talk about later in this book. 34 © Blogging to the Bank Step 5 – Content Posting regular content to your blog is crucial. It will keep the search engine spiders coming to crawl your posts and have existing readers coming back to read the new stuff. Updating will be harder for your Long Term Blogs as there will be plenty of sponsored posts to keep your STBs ticking over. Your LTB needs to kick off with about 10-15 pretty awesome posts. These should all be thought through for LSI and deep linking (check steps 6 & 7) Now there are many ways of getting fresh, readable content for your blog, here’s a few of them I like to use. PLR Pro – Still My Secret Weapon How would you like 440 articles every month split over 11 niche topics? This is exactly what plrpro.com gives you plus tons more including instant backlinks to your blogs to get it crawled on day 1. The articles are the best quality around and it’s the only article content provider I recommend. You can easily take the 40 articles you get on a niche and post one every week or two giving you enough enjoyable sticky blog content for a year. Another major advantage about this service is that only 200 get these same articles. This means there’s no need to worry about any duplicate content problems with the search engines. I strongly recommend you join this service as it saves you a load of time and has helped me make a ton more money. http://www.bloggingtothebank.com/pgb.html You can also find packs of cheap PLR content available on places like eBay, the Sitepoint Marketplace and forums like Digital Point. Write Your Own Now if you’re lazy like me then writing your own content doesn’t sound like such a great idea but the best thing about it is that it is totally unique and it is 100% free. 35 © Blogging to the Bank Writing your own can be great fun but if you are going to be doing a lot of it make sure the market you are in interests you as it will make life much easier. It doesn’t have to be hard to write your own content. You can comment about existing articles or just give your opinion about something. Maybe a product or website review. It’s always best if you add something of your own every few weeks even if it is just updates about the news in the market or a short article you’ve wrote. This is more important for your LTB’s as having mainly unique self written copy is a great selling point further down the line. Free Articles You can post free articles on your blog by a range of authors. These articles can be found in directories like: www.ezinearticles.com www.goarticles.com www.articlealley.com www.isnare.com www.rumorist.com ...and many more. You can reprint these articles on your blog as long as you keep the bio/resource box intact. This usually has a link in it to another site (the authors) so the downside of using free articles is that you maybe sending traffic to another source you don’t get paid for. This puts most people off and many so called experts tell you not to use this method because of sending someone free traffic and that outbound links are bad… This is just BS. If your readers will benefit from the article then it’s good to include it and you can easily put your comments in the post too. This method goes with a couple of the blogging commandments. It serves the reader and it also imitates nature by referencing related sites. Your blog should have some outbound links because any natural site will have. Be careful if you are placing these articles between sponsored posts as with the link in the bottom some services will class this as another sponsored post and may not accept the blogging opportunity you have just submitted. A way to avoid this is to quote the whole article in your blog post and then add your own intro and summary at the end. 36 © Blogging to the Bank Outsourcing Content Creation Here are the main places you can go for hiring people to write content for you: www.rentacoder.com www.elance.com www.guru.com www.odesk.com http://marketplace.sitepoint.com I personally use Elance and Rentacoder.com for around 90% of any of the work I ever outsource and I have always found it the safest service to avoid been ripped off. This is because the worker doesn’t get paid until the work is complete and you’re happy with it. You can get articles wrote for you on these websites by people all over the world and they tend to cost around $5 per article. You can sometimes get them done for $3 or $4 but I have found these to be of lesser quality which isn’t good news for your blog. If you do the sums you’ll see that if you wanted to post every week with outsourced content then it could cost you $260 per year (52 x $5) to keep the content flowing on your blog. Now for one blog this isn’t too bad but if you grow your network it becomes quite a cost to you. I recommend only outsourcing a batch of articles if you don’t have time to use the other 3 methods or if your blog has become very profitable and you want to start adding an extra post or two every month. When bidding for articles or any work make sure you give a detailed description of what you want done. If you want 400 words then say so because a page to some people is different to others who use larger fronts etc. Guest Bloggers If you have a popular blog then many bloggers will be happy to create fresh content for you in exchange for a link back to their own site. You can ask friends with similar blogs to write a post or ask for new bloggers in forums that would like some extra exposure This is also a great way to get people coming to your new LTBs by offering articles to over niche specific and popular blogs. (You will find more about this in the next step). The Content Technique I Use 37 © Blogging to the Bank I know you’ll be wondering which method is best for getting content so here’s what I personally do and have success with. You should use all 5 methods above. I mostly use a mixture of plrpro articles and outsourcing them but I also like to add free articles and news clips with my opinions and maybe a few product reviews etc. By doing this your blog will seem more real and not just a place you are putting article after article. You can post a plr article or outsourced one every week but have an extra post or two just about a free article or something in the news. A reference to a cool website you’ve found which may or may not include your affiliate link. Make sure you add at least one self written quality article per month to each LTB. By using all 5 your blog will be more balanced but it still won’t require you to be writing fresh content every few days for it which can take a lot of time up and when you’re managing a network of tens of blogs it can become quite hard to keep up. Managing Content Posting Due to the amount of blog I had to update before out sourcing some of this work, I came up with a great strategy that not a lot of people seem to know about or use. Once you have 10 or more blogs and you need to post content multiple times per week to most of them it can become quite daunting and you can easily get confused about what has been done and sometime a blog can get missed and not get updated for months. (Well in my experience it can). This is when I came up with the great strategy of having a content session. What I would do is put a morning or afternoon to one side, once per week or every two weeks and add in the content for that period of time. I would do this using 1 of two methods. 1. By using the timestamp feature in Wordpress which allows you to schedule posts to go live in the future. 2. By saving articles as drafts so I could log in from anywhere (even on my mobile) and choose which article to post. Implementing this method saved me a lot of time and stress and I suggest you do the same. Step 6 – Promotion & Backlinks 38 © Blogging to the Bank Now you have your blog set up with excellent content and its monetized correctly and even the search engines will be crawling your blog and indexing it. But we’re not done quite done yet. We now need to promote your blog mainly by getting quality backlinks to your blog which gives you more exposure on the web and also moves you higher up the search engines giving you even more traffic. There are quite a few ways you can get backlinks to your blog so let’s go through them one by one… Article Syndication The first one and one of the most effective ways to get high quality backlinks to your blog is by syndicating original articles which can be wrote by you or outsourced. After you have posted an article to your blog you can also submit it to some article directories which can give you a link from their highly ranked website and it also allows others to put the article on their blog or website as long as they keep the bio/resource box which will have your link in it. This is very good news because over time a good article can end up on hundreds of blogs and websites meaning more links and exposure for you. Doing this manually can take a little time which is why I like to use Brad Callen’s Article Submitter which you can get for free here – http://articlesubmitter.imwishlist.com/ Using the software allows you to submit to over 150 directories in around an hour which is excellent considering it would take you at least 5 hours to do it manually. Now writing an article is really easy and it only has to be 350 to 400 words long. You can simply research and read a couple of articles in around 30 minutes and reword that information into a unique article in another 30 minutes. Remember to make sure the links in your author box are keyword specific using anchor text like when linking from blog to blog. Here is the anchor text you need to use in your bio box… Keyword This means that if your blog was about Wedding Planning and you wanted to rank well for ‘Wedding Planning on a Budget’ your anchor text could look like this: Wedding Planning On A Budget If you don’t use the software you can also do it manually just submitting the very best article directories: www.ezinearticles.com www.goarticles.com www.rumorist.com www.articlealley.com www.isnare.com Alternatively you can outsource this work if you prefer not to use the software. Link Exchanges Another excellent way to get links from related web sites is to get in touch with web site owners either directly from their web site or from adverts placed on places like the Digital Point Forum we mentioned earlier. Here you can ask to reciprocate the linking where you link to their site and you link back to theirs. Only use this method a few times per site as the search engines don’t like to see too much of it and we don’t want to be giving away free links when we can charge for that spot. A better way to build links it so ask everyone to link to your LTB and you link to their site from your different STBs. This is called 3 way linking and is the best way to generate quality, relevant links. You can also use free director submitter software to find relevant market directories for you to exchange links with. There is some excellent new directory software which is free. Here’s the link: http://directorysubmitter.imwishlist.com Press Releases Writing and submitting a press release sounds like hard work but it can be very easy. It can also get you on some very highly ranked and high traffic websites. You can easily write a press release on most articles and news you post to your blog. The best way is to find a piece of braking news and relate it to your blog and post comments about the news and maybe an in depth article. 40 © Blogging to the Bank Then you can easily make a press release that has some edge rather than just the plain boring release as your release will be relevant to braking news in or around your market and is likely to get picked up by news websites The best place to submit your press release is to PR Web. This is the only service I use but here is a list of the top 3. www.prweb.com www.prfree.com www.prnewswire.com You can submit your press release for free or for a better service you can pay. For this method I would just use the free option as it can become quite expensive to submit 4 – 8 press releases per month. Forums Gaining back links by posting on forums can be a very ethical way to get links but only if it is done the right way. Don’t go spamming forums with a ton of links especially if you want to show your face again. There is no need to over use forums as it is easy to do it the right way. All you need to do is join relevant forums to your topic, create your signature that will appear every time you post and then post your article you wrote earlier. You could also ask a couple of questions. Doing this will give you a few back links from not much work. The idea is that you have your blog link and anchor text in your signature so it is just posted automatically. People will take far better to this method than you posting links in your post. In many niches there are many forums. You could just pick the top 10 and post a couple of questions to each. Answer a couple more questions and there you have just gained yourself 40 one way back links from around an hours work. To find forums on your subject just search for “Your Niche Topic” forums. Buying Links Now I personally don’t buy links but I wanted to share this tactic with you because a few of my friends successfully buy links to boost page rank and link popularity so I thought you’d want to know about this. 41 © Blogging to the Bank If you’re on a shoe string budget then it may not be for you but if you have a little money and not as much time then this technique may be perfect for you. The actual method is quite straight forward. You are simply paying someone to place a text link one there site. The link will be very high quality as you’ll be able to tell them the anchor text and description you want. It’s also the only way most people can get links from highly rated .edu sites and other authority sites with page ranks of 7 and 8. So here are a few sites you can use to purchase backlinks: www.backlinks.com www.authoritydomains.com www.onewaytextlinks.com www.linkadage.com www.tnx.net http://marketplace.sitepoint.com http://forums.digitalpoint.com The main thing you need to do when purchasing links is do it slowly over time and track the results each source and purchase makes. This way you can easily see if the links are worth the cost. Blog Links One of the best and easiest ways to get tons of links pointing to your blog is by having other blogs reference your blog and post a link to it. To do this you need to post some great content and even think about posting videos and Podcasts to your blog. The secret is that most blog readers have blogs themselves and if they like your blog most will happily post about your blog in theirs. You just need to offer good content so word of mouth spreads around a few blogs. You can also post comments to high traffic related blogs. Now many use the no follow tag which means the backlink doesn’t help you in the search engines but you can still attract visitors to your blog from that source. The way to post comments to blogs is offer good advice and content. You can no longer get away with a sentence or two and then a link to your blog. Instead the comments need to be helpful and relevant to the post. This way you can build respect and credibility from other people’s traffic. Now these are just some of the ways to get backlinks and traffic to your blog. 42 © Blogging to the Bank Deep Linking Deep linking is a new method I have been using for almost a year now and its benefits to the Long Term Blogs are beyond what I ever expected. Basically what you do is build links to individual posts rather than to your main blog. Using the exact same methods as above. This gives individual pages a better chance of gaining a page rank of their own. With the fluidity of blogging and the fact that most posts only stay on the front page for a week or two at most, it gives advertisers (and buyers) some great places to advertise and get great quality back links. Having a site that has 10 or more pages with internal page rank can automatically boost the sale price of a site by over $5,000 (sometimes a lot more depending on the page rank). This is even true when the pages have not been monetized. This strategy is only aimed at LTBs. 43 © Blogging to the Bank Step 7 – Content & OnSite SEO Earlier in this eBook I mentioned Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) which is important for people really wanting to master the search engines which are now integrating this technology into their algorithms. Now I’m not going to start going on about this science but I am going to put it in very easy to understand terms so anyone can grasp it and start using it on their blog giving them an advantage over other bloggers. LSI is the analysis of words that are related to other words. In search engine terms this means that they will determine what a blog or webpage is about from the words on it. It keeps it way beyond using keywords to tell the search engines what your blog post is about. For example, if I posted an article about the Ferrari F430 then my keywords would naturally be Ferrari F430. But that’s not always enough. You have to have related keywords in your post that don’t use this same keyphrase. Below is an example of part of my blog post: Ferrari F430 I’ve just driven many miles to check out getting a new car. The car in question is a stunning Ferrari F430, the predecessor to the Ferrari 360. There was just something about this fine piece of mechanical achievement glowing in it’s trademark Rosso Corsa Red. As I looked around the showroom I could see it stood out from the Lamborghini’s and porches in there with its clearly defined Scuderia logo. Turning the key to start it up the engine roared and the finely tuned exhaust made me want to sign the check on the spot. You’ll see from the above part of a possible blog post that even though my keyphrase is ‘Ferrari F430’ I don’t overly use it which the search engines don’t like. Instead I only use it in the title and once in the opening (You can use it a few times in the full blog post) but can you see all the related words and phrases. Driven, Car, Ferrari 360, Mechanical, Rosso Corsa Red, Showroom, Lamborghini, Porches, Scuderia, Key, Engine, Tuned Exhaust. You’ll see that every few words have some relation and this is how search engines know relevant content. They go beyond looking at title tags and stand alone keyhrases. The really great thing for you is that very few people are actually using LSI which gives you the advantage to get your blog posts to the top of the search engines more easily. 44 © Blogging to the Bank You can also see from this example that the content comes across as ‘wrote for the reader’ and not for the search engines. I didn’t use ‘Ferrari’ and ‘F430’ in every sentence which screams SEO content. This is the subtle way you will win in the long term as more search engine rely heavily on LSI as time goes by. There’s plenty more you can find out about LSI and a simple Google search will show plenty of information but above are the basics which you can start using right now. One tool I will mention again is the Google Keyword Tool and the “Additional Keywords To Consider” section. These are the keywords that Google considerer to be related to the term you entered. So if you are aiming at driving most of your traffic from Google then the LSI lists are available after a simple search. Unique Themes Having unique themes created is a great way for LTBs to stand out and attract brand recognition, fetch a higher price at sale and attract more advertising money. That said be sure that the creator of your theme knows what they are doing in terms of using header tags etc. For post title. For SEO purposes the search engines give more weighting to H1 tags (the largest heading tag) in the code. This means this should be your main site heading. H2 tags should be used as blog post titles etc. Make sure that your theme is structured using these tags as just having the text appear large and in the place of a heading does not help the search engine robots when crawling your site. 45 © Blogging to the Bank Step 8 – Web 2.0 Strategies Now to compliment the normal blog promotion strategies here also some Web 2.0 style promotion strategies which have proven to be very success to both me and many of my Blogging to the Bank 2.0 customers Method 1 – Squidoo Squidoo is a growing website that is getting more powerful by the day and is excellent to leverage to drive traffic to your blog. Squidoo is really easy to use but before you set up an account, it’s important to familiarize yourself with some of the terms that are exclusive to Squidoo: Lens – having a ‘lens’ is rather similar to owning a blog. It’s like your virtual real estate on Squidoo. And get this: you can either build just one lens or maintain 100 of them! It’s all totally free too. But more on lens later…… Lens Modules Modules are basically the tools and resources you’re provided on Squidoo, to upload text, images and any other information to your lens. Here are some great modules you want to make use of: All about you: - Includes Write, Make a list, Google Maps, YouTube, Link List, etc, etc. Blogger lens: - Includes RSS feed, BoingBoing, Technorati, Guestbook, etc, etc. How-to lens: - Includes Write, Flickr Pics, YouTube, The MAKE Blog, etc, etc. $$ Lens: - For Ebay and Amazon Just Add Water: - Includes: Link List, RSS Feed, Write, Amazon, Flickr Pictures, Google Maps, eBay, Guestbook Custom Lens: - Here, you have the option of picking and choosing from the modules you want. What’s more, you can simply add or remove them anytime you want to. How to Set Up Your Squidoo Account Before I walk you through the steps, let me just expand on what I’ve already told you about a ‘lens’: 46 © Blogging to the Bank OK, what is a Squidoo Lens, anyway? Well, just as I mentioned earlier, a Squidoo lens is pretty similar to a blog: - you can post your content, customize it to your liking, post comments to similar blogs, etc. But the similarities end there. For, Squidoo gives you the added ability to add content from external sources, which is way easier to do than with a simple blog. Moreover, it enables you to instantly throw in content and products from websites such as CafePress, Ebay and Amazon.com. Any commissions you earn are split 50-50 – you get half and the rest goes to Squidoo. You can also insert Google Adsense ads and, depending on the amount of traffic your lens generates, you’re entitled to a sizeable share from the Squidoo Adsense revenue pool. Additionally, you’re free to add videos from YouTube, set up polls, RSS feeds and have readers generate content for you with guest books, plus much much more! With such a lot of variety and some unique tools at your disposal, Squidoo can soon be quite addictive! Alright, with that out of the way, it’s now time to set up your very own Squidoo account! Step #1: Sign up free Go here to set up your own account: http://www.squidoo.com/member/registration Make sure you fill out all of the fields leaving nothing blank. Once you’re done, you’ll be taken to another page. Just point your mouse to the ‘Create a lens’ tab to get started. Step #2: What’s your niche market? You’ll now be asked to type in the topic of your lens; in other words, your niche market. So for example, if you’re targeting small business owners, the keyword you want to give your lens would be ‘Small Business.’ Next, click on ‘Go to next step.’ Step #3: What’s the purpose of your lens? Why do you want to build a lens? To spread the word about your niche? Sell your services? Make money? Or simply to drive traffic to your website? Tick the appropriate box, and then continue to the next page! (BTW, I’ll be focusing on using Squidoo to send insane amounts of traffic to your website, later in this chapter.) Step #4: It’s time to give your lens a name! Here, you need to come up with a strong title using the keyword of your lens. Finding it hard to come with a good headline? Well, here’s a quick tip for you: 47 © Blogging to the Bank Think of the biggest benefit you offer to your target audience. Then, build a compelling title around that benefit. For instance, if the biggest benefit you offer your niche market is showing them how to get good car deals on Ebay, then you’ll want to title your lens ‘Insider Secrets To Getting Fantastic Car Deals On Ebay.’ Or, you can opt for the how to route: ‘How to Get Great Car Deals on Ebay.’ Now that wasn’t too hard, was it? So if you’re stuck for headlines, make sure you try this technique. It works! Next, pick your URL – the link where your lens will ‘live.’ The more specific, the better, as users will be able to quickly identify the topic of your lens. This means, the traffic you get will be more targeted, which is a good thing. For instance, if we are to continue with the above example, you’d want to enter a URL similar to this: squidoo.com/greatebaycardeals Thereafter, you need to choose the category your lens will fit into. Next, tick the appropriate box based on the audience suitability factor of your lens, i.e. if your lens is family-friendly or more suited to an adult audience. Proceed to the next step! Step #5: Throw in some tags Tags (Keywords) are vital to helping people find your lens. To come up with suitable tags, think about the search terms users might type into Google, when looking up info on your niche area. Next, you’ll need to enter a security word and then continue on to the next page. Step # 6: Edit your lens Click on the link ‘Edit your lens’ in the big yellow arrow. Next, scroll down a bit, until you come to the long grey box just beneath the words ‘More about you.’ First, you want to fill out the section ‘My Bio.’ Write a brief, but interesting bio about yourself, your skills and how others can benefit from your expertise. Make sure to insert a link to your website as well. TIP: Try to incorporate some of the keywords or tags you’re targeting, in your bio. Now click on the ‘Edit’ button next to the term ‘Payment Options.’ I mentioned previously, that you can earn a commission through your Squidoo lens. Well, you’ll now need to set your payment option and save the changes. 48 © Blogging to the Bank What’s more, you also have the option of adding, changing or deleting your tags! Step #7: Pick your modules Next, click on ‘Add Modules,’ which is located on the top left-hand corner of the page. Then, simply choose the modules you’d like to add to your lens, and click ‘Add’ next to each of them. For instance, if you’re looking to use your lens to earn a side-income, you’ll want to select the ‘Moneymakers’ tab, because obviously that would contain the most suitable modules to add. HOT TIP: The most popular modules on Squidoo are Amazon, Ebay and Cafepress for monetizing your lens, the ‘Link List’ to add various links to affiliate products and related sites, YouTube, the Poll module and the Guestbook to incorporate interaction with readers of your lens, and the ‘Write’ module to add useful content in the article extracts forum with links back to your site to read the entire article. Once you’re done, simply click ‘Publish’ to publish your lens! Step #8: Set your preferences Once you’ve published your modules, you want to point your mouse to the ‘My Accounts’ tab at the top right hand corner of the window. Again, on the right hand corner, you’ll see the ‘Preferences’ box. Make sure the 3rd line of text, i.e. ‘Open external links in new window,’ is in ‘On’ mode. This will enable all of your links to open in a new window, and will ensure readers return to your lens to check out more info, instead of clicking off. To view your stats, view your Squidoo lens or edit it further, or even create yet another lens, just go ahead and click on the tab ‘My Lenses!’ One more thing, make sure you visit the FAQ and Help Center (located at the the top of the Home Page) if you’d like to have a broader picture of how the whole Squidoo thing works! Method 2 – Digg Here’s the scoop on Digg: By now, many of you would have heard about Digg, right? – The free Web 2.0 social news service that continues to be the rage in the world of social bookmarking, because of its simple yet amazingly powerful strategy. Digg’s policy is all about enabling its millions of 49 © Blogging to the Bank users to submit and decide the top stories of the day, instead of having a newspaper editor do the job. Readers ‘digg’ content they like and ‘bury’ news pieces they dislike. The more ‘diggs’ a story accumulates, the more its ranking will continue to grow. And the article that generates the highest rankings will be featured on the home page for everyone to read. To help users moderate the various posts that are made, and also to help them deal with duplicates, spam and posts that are off topics, Digg introduced the ‘bury’ feature. If a news piece gets ‘buried’ many times, you’ll soon find it pretty difficult to access it on the site, and instead, will need to view it through the user profile of a person who has Xig the article. What type of content can be Xig? Well, at first, only articles on technology were tracked by Digg, but today, they’ve included the following categories too: • Sports • World and Business • Science • Videos • Gaming • Entertainment etc. Additionally, you’ll find there are many sub-categories within each main category. This makes it easy to find the articles you’re looking for. How can Digg bring me an avalanche of traffic? Well, the secret lies in your posts. There are 2 ways in which Digg can send a ton of visitors to your site: 3) When you provide useful and interesting content, most folks will definitely take a few seconds to view your user profile. That’s when they spot the link to your site. And because you’ve already provided them with some great content, they’re sure to click through to your website to check out what else you’re offering. This means more exposure for your site, which can also mean more sales for you! 3) Digg doesn’t host your article – they only provide the title of your post and a brief description of it. The actual article will be on your website. 50 © Blogging to the Bank Now if your post happens to land a spot on the coveted Home Page of Digg, chances are you’re going to get a lot of click- throughs. And when folks arrive at your site and gain some sort of benefit from your article, they’re bound to stay longer and explore it further! So how do I submit an article to Digg? First, you want to sign up for a user account. (Which by the way is free!) Next, you’ve got to submit your news piece to Digg. For those of you aren’t familiar with the whole process, here’s how you do it: • You’ll receive a prompt from the ‘submit’ screen, asking you to enter the web address of the article you plan to submit. • Thereafter, you’ll need to enter the title and also a brief summary of the article. Hint: Most Digg users will want to view your post based on how powerful and attractive your title and description are, so make sure you pay some attention to this aspect of your article. • OK, once you’re done with that, you want to pick and choose the appropriate category and sub-category for your post. • Finally, click ‘Submit Story.’ You will then see around 10 possible duplicates. Simply confirm your content hasn’t been Xig already and finalize your article submission. Your news story will then be made available for all to read! Many webmasters out there have quickly realized the value of Digg, and are now using it to generate a massive amount of traffic to their sites. Have a stampede of traffic to your site using the combined power of Digg and Netscape! Lately, there’ve been a number of smart, savvy internet marketers who’re actively utilizing the power of Digg and Netscape to drive a flood of traffic to their sites. And now, you can too! But just exactly how do you go about doing this? Let’s break it down into easy steps, ok? Submission First off, while Digg is all about the number of votes you get, Netscape focuses on timebased votes. To elaborate – if you generate a total of 8 votes in 8 minutes your story will probably be featured on the home page of Netscape. Now before I go into more details, let’s focus on Digg for a couple minutes..... 51 © Blogging to the Bank Each time a Digg member submits a news piece you wrote, Digg will display a link to your website’s article, and some brief info the member submits. And, if fellow Digg readers happen to enjoy your piece, chances are they too will dig it. So the higher the Xigs your article generates, the higher its ranking will be… Which translates into a larger readership for you! Just imagine the traffic you’ll receive on an awesome article – it could easily result in 5,000 + visitors. And more traffic = more profits for you! Here are 3 quick tips you can implement to have your stories on the front pages of Digg and Netscape: • Write out lively and catchy titles and descriptions for all of your articles, since they usually tend to outperform dull, insipid ones by a great margin. • Posts that contain useful, informative content that’s beneficial to readers (eg. How-to guides) attract a larger audience. • Since both Digg and Netscape seek to promote current, up-to-date information, articles that describe stale events are generally not received with much enthusiasm. Comments This strategy is one of the simplest and most profitable ways to benefit from the massive traffic that Digg and Netscape constantly attract. And yet, only a very few marketers are actually implementing the technique I’m about to reveal to you. So listen up! Tell me, have you ever noticed that Netscape and Digg have made available, a comment feature for readers to use? And did you also know leaving meaningful comments that contained subtle links to your website, can easily drive hundreds and sometimes even thousands of traffic to your site – especially if the article you commented on made it to the home page….. Hot Tip: If you want to enhance your chances (and who doesn’t X), to making it to the Home pages of these two sites, then you probably need to include Digg and Netscape buttons in your news stories and RSS feeds. Which leads us to… 3 simple techniques that will help you maximize the potential of profiting through comments made on Digg and Netscape: • Make sure you comment on current topics of interest on Digg, as it’s sure to be read by many more readers. 52 © Blogging to the Bank • Only include links if you’re confident that folks will benefit by clicking through to your website. • Also, keep in mind that you needn’t always comment on a post that’s related to your niche; sometimes, leaving useful comments on topics that are completely different, can still result in a good amount of traffic to your site. Just don’t go around spamming – make sure you keep well away from it! Method 3 – del.icio.us If you’ve checked out the ‘hotlist’ that’s displayed on the Home Page of del.icio.us, you’ll have noticed it’s a fantastic resource of links and unique content ideas. Secondly, it helps you keep track of the latest ‘in things’ folks are talking about. Thirdly and most importantly, it’s a page that attracts a massive amount of traffic very quickly. In fact, it’s increasingly being utilized by many internet marketers who’re profiting from all of the targeted traffic their sites receive. And now….you can too! Here’s how: Technique # 1: Write a ‘how-to’ post Amazingly, articles with the words ‘how-to’ in their headlines, attract people like magnets and have been proved to pull in a higher response than posts lacking this phrase. It’s that powerful! And, if you carefully scan del.icio.us’s hotlist, you’ll see that a fair amount of links contain the words ‘how-to’ in them. So the next time you want to crack into the hotlist, create a how-to post – walk your readers through a formula that teaches them how to achieve something. For instance, if your niche is internet marketing, you could write out an article detailing the steps you need to take to start an online business. Then, simply insert a how-to headline – ‘How to successfully start a profitable online business.’ That’s it! If your article contains some useful tips and strategies and is written in an interesting and conversational manner, then the chances of your article being bookmarked will be very high. 53 © Blogging to the Bank Technique # 2: Come up with a list List titles also dominate del.icio.us’s hotlist page; in fact, they account for approx. 40% of the current links. So you might want to go for this method, instead of a how-to article. It’s totally your call! Technique # 3: Make sure you number your list for best results More often than not, lists that include a number in them are the ones that become quite popular. Eg. 10 Great Tips to Ace Your Interview I have no idea what it is about numbers that capture the interest of del.icio.us readers – because they seem to bookmark them more readily. Hence, it’s a good idea to implement this technique when you get around to writing out a list! Technique # 4: Get humorous! For ages, internet marketers have used humour to successfully get their messages across to their target audience. Today, many smart folks are employing this same technique to get to the top of del.icio.us’s coveted hotlist. For example, there was a link on del.icio.us some time ago, that read: ‘Ten Simple Rules For Dating My Daughters.’ Now if you happen to spot a funny title like that, you’re bound to check it out, right? Well, that’s exactly what users did, when the link caught their attention. And sure enough, the link vaulted into del.icio.us’s hotlist in no time at all! Using humour to capture readers’ interest is definitely going to get you favourable results, so go for it! Technique # 5: Give people some inspiration Let’s face it: Inspirational and motivational messages always seem to give us that feel-good factor, by the time we’ve finished reading them. Ever wondered the reason for this? Well, if you’re like me, you like to be inspired on an emotional level. This is exactly why most members on del.icio.us will not hesitate to bookmark links that inspire or motivate them in any way. So, if you’re looking to generate plenty of targeted hits to your website and give people some inspiration at the same time, this is the way to go! 54 © Blogging to the Bank Technique # 6: Make outrageous (but truthful) claims and watch your traffic skyrocket! OK, no matter how hypey they may sound, bold, sensational headlines always succeed in grabbing our attention. Think about it. I mean, why on earth would the tabloids keep indulging in it, if it weren’t profitable for them? Take a look at this headline: “17-year old boy fights shark with bare hands and escapes unhurt!” Tell me, if you spot a link similar to the one above on del.icio.us, would you be interested in reading more? Sure you would! And what’s more, before you know it, you’ll find yourself excitedly clicking on the link to see what all the fuss is about. In other words, the writer of that headline succeeded in ‘luring’ you to his/her website to read the rest of the story! Why don’t you try to come up with a bold title and see how many people bookmark it? If it’s decent enough, you’ll soon see a stampede of traffic to your site in double quick time. **Please keep in mind that the content of your article needs to be honest and legal. Writing a bunch of nonsense is just not going to cut it. Method 4 – Technorati Now for the most powerful source you can use to generate traffic to your blog – Technorati! Technorati is known as a blogger’s ‘best friend’, since it’s one of the best traffic sources a blog owner could ask for. Not only does it make your blog way easier to find, it’s also one of the largest blog ranking search engines out there. Your blog is given a ranking based on the number of incoming links to your blog from other websites/blogs. And, the higher your ranking, the easier it is for people to find your blog when they enter relevant search terms. OK, before I show you how Technorati can increase the flow of traffic to your blog , it’s time to set up head over to their website and sign up for an account. http://www.technorati.com Once you’re done with the main settings such as your profile, you want to claim your blog. To do this, simply go to ‘Account’ and then scroll down the page until you arrive at the tab ‘Your Blogs.’ 55 © Blogging to the Bank Next, type in the URL of your blog in the corresponding text box and choose ‘Claim this weblog.’ Thereafter, point your mouse to the button ‘Configure this blog’ and fill in necessary details. Then, select ‘Include this blog in Technorati’s blog finder,’ and type in as many targeted keywords that represent the niche market of your blog. OK, you now want to click on ‘Save changes,’ and grab your ‘claim’ code. Technorati gives you 2 types of code that you can place in your blog. This is so they can verify that your blog does indeed exist and also be able to keep track of it. Now if you happen to own a blog that’s powered by Blogger.com or another blog host that doesn’t enable you to have direct control of your blog, you need to use the ‘Link Code’ and insert it in your weblog. You’ve also got the option of including a Technorati search box in your blog, without making any adjustments to the code you just pasted. Finally, pick the options you like and then click on ‘Save Changes.’ Everything is taken care of, courtesy Technorati. Oh, one more thing…..it’s a good idea to add the Technorati ping link to your weblog. Implementing this technique will alert them each time you update your blog. For more info on this, just head over to http://www.technorati.com/developers/ping Here are some observations on Technorati and proof that their tagging system does indeed work. • Tagging has become one of the hottest buzzwords in online marketing circles in recent times. In fact, it’s a novel way to categorize the vast amount of information on the Web. Tags enable you to enhance the value of your individual blog posts within your blog, by driving greater importance into a topic. To elaborate, let’s assume you write a post on ‘niche marketing,’ on your blog, which focuses on all aspects of niche marketing. You then tag that particular post with the term ‘niche marketing.’ Once you do this, this post becomes easily searchable within your niche! It also serves as another way for your content to be found and used, by contributing to a specific information group about niche marketing that’s exists beyond your blog discussion. Now Technorati gets a massive amount of traffic, because many folks refer to it as the ‘blog search engine,’ so it makes sense to get your blog listed too. And, when you tag your blog with highly relevant and targeted keywords, the chances of attracting traffic to your blog 56 © Blogging to the Bank through Technorati, significantly increases. As I mentioned earlier on, this would mean more exposure for your website and other affiliate links, since you’re promoting them on your blog. • When utilizing Technorati Tags to search for info on topics of interest, you’ll find that the results are often extremely targeted and relevant to the subject. Additionally, the next time you perform a Tag search in Technorati, take note of the ‘Related Tag’ field. Because, these tags aren’t just related tags, they often indicate topics that are frequently discussed or in other words, topics that are ‘hot.’ This is an ideal opportunity for you to generate more traffic to your blog. All you’ve got to do is blog about a hot topic and tag all of your content. Because it’s already a frequently searched Tagged term, you can expect traffic to your blog skyrocket in no time at all! • Technorati tags have now begun to show up in top Google Search Engine Results, mainly because they’re usually targeted, frequently updated and most importantly, content rich. A great example would be the Google search results for ‘Blog Marketing.’ You’ll notice that the Technorati Tag for blog marketing, ranks an impressive number 11 in Google. So when somebody clicks on that link to Technorati, and your content is correctly tagged, you’re likely to see a spike in your blog traffic, as folks will see your content in the tagged results! Alright, let’s now dive into the ‘meat and potatoes’ of this method… How to promote your blog using the power of Technorati! • You’ve got to think like a Googler! Draw up a list of popular keyword terms and then tag each one of them in Google. Here’s an example: [Keep in mind you don’t have to use colons, quotes, etc, etc, to do this] tag blog marketing If there happens to be a Technorati Tag for that particular keyword, it will turn up in the search results. Then, click those links and note the type of content being published on Technorati. If it’s relevant, make a list of the bloggers that are publishing posts in relation to those tags, and try using them for your blog too. Another technique is to perform a regular search for that keyword term and check out the initial search result pages in Google, to see if the Tag has any significant ranking. 57 © Blogging to the Bank And here’s a neat tool you can use to implement this strategy: Just go to NicheBlot’s Ranking Tool and type in the keyword term. Next, type in Technorati.com as the domain and make sure the search ranking reads ‘Top1000.’ Now all what you’ve got to do is target that tag with your own cutting-edge content! But it’s also a good idea to link to other blogs that are publishing to that tag. Doing all of this will enable you to join the tag with your posts and gain more exposure for your blog. Secondly, it’s a cool way of finding other bloggers that share similar interests to yours. And, linking to their content might well generate plenty of social traffic to your blog! • Publish Targeted Categories Publishing targeted categories enables you to easily target Technorati Tags. What I mean by this is naming your blog categories with your keyword terms for Google, and which you think might have some Technorati Tag activity that may be advantageous to you. In fact, here’s what Technorati says about this: “If your blog software supports categories and RSS/Atom (like Movable Type, WordPress, TypePad, Blogware, Radio), just use the included category system and make sure you are publishing autodiscovered RSS/Atom and we will automatically include tags with your posts! Your categories will be read as tags.” • Target The Tags That Influencers Are Targeting Run a search on the tags that popular and influential bloggers in your targetmarket are targeting. These guys must be getting plenty of traffic by choosing tags like these, so it’s a good idea for you to join that conversation and enhance your profile in tag results. But you need to make sure the tag/s you plan on using are relevant to your blog, else you’d only start attracting non-targeted traffic, which is pretty much useless! Combining these Web 2.0 strategies with the other promotion methods in the previous chapter should have your blog growing in no time and flooding with targeted visitors. 58 © Blogging to the Bank Method 5 – Twitter You have probably heard of Twitter by now. It is very popular with celebrities but is in basics a micro-blogging service. That said the power of Twitter goes hand in hand with our blogs to enable us to interact in a different way with our readers and also let them know when our blog has new updates. Instead of me explaining all of this here, our team have put together a full Twitter course that you can access for free on the link below: http://twitterdominationsystem.com/tds-ty2.html 59 © Blogging to the Bank Step 9 – Outsourcing & Building Your Blog Empire If you want to blog for serious cash, I’m talking no less than six figures here you need to use a systematic approach and your role is really to manage your blog empire. Outsourcing becomes a huge part of building a blog empire as you’ll need writers, posters, promoters etc. You may even have people doing all this but for just a few blogs each. Like with the outsourcing of articles you can find people on: www.rentacoder.com www.elance.com www.guru.com www.odesk.com http://marketplace.sitepoint.com And a few other sites but after you find someone good you need to really try and hire them full or part time giving them regular monthly work. Looking to eastern Europe and Asia you can hire people full time for as little as a few hundred dollars per month. These people don’t need much skill to post drafts to your blogs and even submit articles and do other types of promotion. Now it may cost a little more to hire writers and skilled backlink builders but you should have a mix of well skilled and not so skilled workers. Don’t worry if it sounds a little daunting to hire workers that will be getting paid regularly as you won’t need them at the start. I recommend that everyone should build their first 5 or 10 blogs themselves to learn the process. Then you can hire one person to help you grow more and keep posting to these blogs on a weekly or even daily basis if you wish. As you get more blogs you may have one writer, one poster and one promoter. Then you’ll just add to these positions as you need them. What not to outsource! Not all jobs should be outsourced. I wouldn’t recommend outsourcing buying links or handling any type of transactions for you. This could easily run into problems. I also wouldn’t recommend having one person do all the jobs for any one blog. If they set the blog up, write and post articles and even promote the blog there is chance they could set up similar blogs and be your competition if they know you are making money. 60 © Blogging to the Bank On the other hand when you get quite a large blog empire I also wouldn’t have one person doing one job for all the blogs. I.e. it’s not a good idea to only have 1 writer if you have 50 blogs or so because if you lose that one writer for whatever reason then you could be in trouble. Instead always have a few people doing the job so you can have them fill in for people if need be. Training people won’t be a problem as you can easily give them sections of this eBook to read or show them the step by step videos you may have also purchased which can train even someone who is new to blogging how to set them up and make money. Another little tip about building your blog empire is that when you find an excellent market that makes very good money you should duplicate this a few times in that same market. Now you don’t want to just make exact copies of the blog but you could have similar blogs with new content on them and also reference the original blog using some of there content. So before you get to this stage of building hundreds of blogs you need to first build one. I recommend you do this all yourself to at least master the process and then you can start outsourcing the tasks you don’t like and you’re not good at. 61 © Blogging to the Bank Step 10 – Selling Your Blogs This is a new key step to my Blogging to the Bank system and something I have been doing over the last 12 months to 2 years very successfully. Once you have your blogs up and running earning steady money it’s a great option to sell them. Now don’t think your bogs have to be earning thousands of dollars every month to sell... You can sell blogs making $50 per month. As this is what lead me to the two type blogging formula. Any STB that has been earning $50 or more for 2-3 months consistently should be sold on at this point for at least $300. This will then provide you money to invest in your LTB without having to find this money personally. It can be used for anything from a blog re-design and branding, to link building or outsourcing. Here are the best places to sell your blogs either signally or as a network. http://flippa.com http://forums.digitalpoint.com I would strong suggest that you aim to sell STBs on Digital Point as it is free. Only move sites up to Flippa if they are earning over $100 per month as out aim is to hit $1000 for these sites. All LTB’s should be sold on Flippa. Now, when you’re getting ready to sell your blog you can expect to get anywhere from 6 to 12 months profit for it. I wouldn’t sell a blog for less than 6 months revenue as it doesn’t make any sense to let profitable blogs or websites go for this cheap. If you have a network of blogs then you may also be able to approach an existing large business in the blog’s same market and sell to then for even a few years profit. Here are 3 steps you need to take before selling... 3)Maximize Your Revenue... Because you get a sale price based on your recent profits then it only makes sense to make the extra effort to increase your blogs revenue. The easiest way to do this is to make sure all the link places on your blog are sold. To do this go to existing advertisers offering a discount and post in the buy/sell links forum on DigitalPoint offering a special offer to get the links sold. You can also take on extra reviews or promote extra products to your list to increase revenue. 62 © Blogging to the Bank 2) Make Sure Your Traffic Is Growing... No one wants to buy a site or blog that is falling and traffic declining. Buyers will be looking for blogs that are growing and still have lots of potential. This is why it’s important to put some extra work in the month and even two/three months before the sale to make your blog pit this pattern and show growth. You need to make sure your traffic stats are growing, Alexa ranking is increasing, Backlinks are building and your RSS readers are growing. Do some extra marketing including social bookmarketing, article marketing and even try and get to guest post on some popular blogs. 3) Depersonalize Your Blog... When you first think about selling your blog which can even be the minute your creating you should take steps not to personalize the blog to you too much. By having a blog that is too personal it will be extremely difficult to sell for good price. Buyers want to be able to take over the running of the blog quickly and easily so it makes sense that they’ll pay more the easier it is. Here a few things you can do to help: - Use a pseudonym (pen name) - Have guest writers on your blog - Promote using sub accounts (article directories/forums etc) - Don’t use pictures of yourself or friends/family - Don’t put personal details too much on the blog So they’re the 3 techniques to maximize your sale price. It’s also a good idea to start with the end in mind, meaning you should know if you’re planning on selling your blog/s when you first set them up as you’ll need separate hosting accounts, Autoresponder accounts etc to make it easy to transfer the blog or blog network. 63 © Blogging to the Bank Bonus – Thousands of Free Links Back To Your Blog Here’s how you can get thousands of one way backlinks to your blog for free. It has to do with blog comments Here’s how it works. When you make a comment on a blog you get to put your name in as the title. This is where you place your keyword as it’s hyperlinked and therefore you get a backlink. However… This is where most marketers leave it. Now, what a few smart marketers do, and I do mean just a very small percentage, is only look for WordPress blogs with the Top Commentators plug-in enabled. This is because as you make new comments over a week or two (to not look like a comment spammer) you become a top commentator and appear in this section with your keyword name. Now the really cool part is that this Top Commentators section is on every page of the blog… It’s site wide. So that means you find a blog with thousands of post, make a dozen comments or even less (I’ve got on it by just making 3 comments) and you get thousands of links. Now one important thing you need to do with this method and the forum posting and any other, is make sure the links are Do Follow and not No Follow so the links count in the search engines. The easiest way to track this is using Firefox and getting the No Follow feature enabled which tells you when there’s a no follow on sites. 64 © Blogging to the Bank Bonus – The Sneaky Theme Sponsor Trick This is a very cool way to get backlinks but it’s a little bit of a gamble. What happens is you sponsor a WordPress theme and in return for some money you get your link at the bottom of the template. This means that every time a template/theme is used you get a link. Now on a popular theme this can be amazing and generate thousands of links for next to nothing. However… On a not so popular theme you can get only a few backlinks. This is why it’s important to tread carefully when you start using this technique. To search for sponsorship opportunities you can check out the digitalpoint forum as well as Sitepoint.com’s marketplace and any of the Wordpress forums. An alternative to sponsoring a theme is to create your own or outsource it and then promote it yourself with your link in it. Creating templates can be a very cool way to get quality backlinks over time in a very natural way so it is definitely worth looking in to. 65 © Blogging to the Bank Bonus – The Bloggers Tool Kit Out Sourcing Digital Point Forums – http://forums.digitalpoint.com Sitepoint Marketplace – http://marketplace.sitepoint.com Elance – http://elance.com Guru – http://guru.com Page Rank Checkers DN Scoop – http://dnscoop.com GPRC - http://www.prchecker.info/check_page_rank.php PR Checker - http://www.prchecker.info/ Plug-Ins Ad Management OIO Publisher - http://www.oiopublisher.com/ WP 125 - http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp125/ All In One SEO Pack - http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/ Spam Management – Akismet - http://akismet.com/ Twitter – Tweet This - http://richardxthripp.thripp.com/tweet-this Themes Woo Themes - http://www.woothemes.com/ Wordpress Themes - http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/ WPRemix - http://wpremix.com/ Traffic/Link Tracking Bud URL – http://budurl.com Google Analytics – http://analytics.google.com 66 © Blogging to the Bank Bonus – Making Money from This EBook Many blog readers have blogs themselves. This means that promoting Blogging to the Bank 2010 on your blog is a huge opportunity even if your blog is out of the ‘make money’ niche as many bloggers who read your blog are targeted to this product. How many bloggers do you think would love to make money from their blogs. Most of them do. I’d say no less than 99% of them. Sure, there’s a few that don’t want any ads or anything on their blog but most people would love to quit their day job and earn money blogging about things they enjoy. And another thing that makes this a great opportunity is that the market is huge. Did you know that at the time of writing this there are over 100 million blogs online… I think you’ll agree that quite a huge market. So here’s how you can make easy money promoting this eBook. As your blog grows you’re not sticking adsense in every corner of it, I only suggest one unit until your blog grows which means a lot of dead space. Now you don’t want to cover it in ads but it’s an excellent idea to promote something offer than your affiliate product that is still related to most people. The best way to do this is by having a banner for Blogging to the Bank 2010 on your blog. You can find these on the affiliate page: http://www.bloggingtothebank.com/affiliates.html There are lots of banners on there that will suit a range of dead space on your blog. Plus there’s also all the info on how to get your affiliate link etc so you can start promoting within minutes. You can also promote using Google Adwords, the Web 2.0 techniques earlier and many other ways. If you read the affiliate page you’ll see all the different ways to promote but for now build your blog and include a banner or product review for Blogging to the Bank 2010. 67 © Blogging to the Bank Final Words So there you have it…The fool proof blueprint for long term blogging success. I hoped you’ve enjoyed this eBook and if you do have any feedback then please just email me on feedback@bloggingtothebank.com The most important thing you need to do now is take action. Like I said at the very beginning of this eBook it doesn’t matter how late it is, you need to take some action right now to make a start. The worst thing you can do is put this eBook down and not do anything with the amazing information you’ve just learnt. So at least do a little research, make a plan of action for yourself over the next week or so and stick to it. Here’s to your blogging success Talk soon Rob Benwell