During the past several weeks, a lot of the talk has been about the F.T.C. and the policing of bloggers. Some bloggers are worried, others are outraged and some of us are just sitting back watching, taking it all in.
The gist of the new law is that we have to disclose when we receive freebies. As a blogger who has always disclosed, I am not overly worried but I am concerned at the misconceptions that seem to be floating around and at what appears to be the over-policing of bloggers.
Do people really care if I got a bottle of syrup for free? Seriously? I mean I am going to tell you anyway but are people concerned that I may be writing a post (three or four paragraphs) about said syrup and all you are thinking is “Did she get that for free?”
A lot of people ask about the importance of grammar in blogging while others are not at all concerned with grammar. No matter how you blog, if grammar is a concern of yours, check out these recent posts:
If you’re new to blogging, thinking of getting started or even procrastinating because you feel overwhelmed by the idea…here’s something that might help. It’s a step-by-step 16-page guide to setting up and making money from your blog.
It’s called:
“Blogger’s Ultimate Guide: Make $2000 to $3000 Using ONE Simple Blog On Any Kind Of Niche!”
It covers what you need to start making sense of profitable blogging including:
- How you can make money blogging
– What is a blog
– What types of blogs you can start
– Blogging software…and they’re free
– Understanding the various components of a blog from blogrolls to posts to sidebars
– Choosing a topic for your blog
– How to earn money with your blog
– Getting websites to link to your blog (for more traffic and search engine reputation)
– How to track your blog traffic
– How to interpret your blog traffic statistics for maximum results
If you haven’t read this yet, then you should. The Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide is a must read for any blogger. This 22 page bible gives you some of the best tips around for optimizing your blog.
Making money from your blog is always an option that is available to most bloggers. There is a fine line between being over commercialized and trying to make some money. You have to find what works for you while still appealing to your readers.
Advertisements will be more effective for the blogger, the readers, and the advertisers if they are highly relevant to the content of the blog. Don’t just throw any advertisement on your blog. Make sure it is useful to readers and the ads will
Use Affiliate Marketing for Appropriate Products
When monetizing your blog, don’t forget affiliate programs. By marketing products and services that are targeted to your audience you can make a nice amount of money. Plus, affiliate programs can help to fill voids when you haven’t sold all of your direct ad spots.
Provide an Advertising Page with Details
If you are selling advertising space, set up a page dedicated to providing information and details to potential advertisers. This will hopefully help to generate interest and it will also reduce the amount of questions you get. Don’t forget to let people know why they should advertise on your blog instead of the millions of other blogs out there.
Offer Premium Content
Some bloggers make money by selling access to premium content. That premium content could be articles, online tools, a member’s only forum, premium blog themes, etc. To make money this way you have to be able to offer something that others will be willing to pay for.
Use an Ad Management System
You can save yourself some time and increase your productivity with an ad server like OpenX or the OIO Publisher plugin for WordPress. These resources will make life easier for you and for your advertisers.
This offers one of my most suggested tips to almost every blogger, get an email feed option. Taking care of your subscribers and offering them as many options as possible. Great tips here!
If you are not offering an email subscription option in addition to RSS, you are losing subscribers. Some people just prefer to use email. FeedBurner makes it easy to offer email subscriptions.
Offer a Free Giveaway to Subscribers
Some bloggers successfully use a free giveaway to generate more subscribers. Chris Garrett uses a free e-book to draw in new subscribers, and plenty of other bloggers have used this method as well.
Make Your Subscription Links More Noticeable
In order to increase subscribers, make it as easy as possible for visitors to subscribe. This includes placing your subscription links and icons in highly-visible locations where they can’t be missed.
Publish a Full Feed
Subscribers prefer to receive a full RSS feed rather than a partial feed. Personally, I don’t see any reason to use a partial feed. More people will unsubscribe and it really won’t have a drastic effect on click-throughs.
Follow Up with Unconfirmed Email Subscribers
Regardless of how good your blog is, some people will sign up for the email subscription and then never click on the confirmation link from FeedBurner. When you login to FeedBurner you can see who has not yet confirmed. You can export all of your email subscribers (confirmed and unconfirmed) into an Excel file, then sort the file to get all of the unconfirmed subscribers together, cut and paste the address into an email, and send a brief message to remind them to subscribe.
Use Subscriber-Only Posts
With WordPress you can create a post that will go out to your subscribers but will not be displayed on your blog itself. I first read of this trick from Courtney Tuttle at this post. If you have a message that you want to go to just your subscribers, this might be a good thing to try.
Don’t Display the Subscriber Count Until it is High
In my opinion it is a mistake to show your subscriber count if it is low. It only shows visitors that you have not established an audience yet. A low subscriber count is normal for new blogs, but it’s not something that you want to proclaim to the world. The hard part is knowing when it should be displayed. I think between 100 – 200 is safe, but that’s a matter of opinion.
Subscribe to Your Own Feed
No, I’m not saying this to boost your feed count, but rather to see exactly how your feed is appearing to your subscribers. You wouldn’t publish a website without testing it, so why not see what you feed is doing? Personally, I subscribe to my feed in an RSS reader and at an email address. That way I can keep an eye on the appearance of the feed and detect and correct any issues.
Networking. Ahh networking. One of my specialties. I love networking. There is something about the thrill of connecting with others. Look out in the blogosphere at some of the successful bloggers and you will notice that the majority of them are active networkers. They take the time to connect with people.
Sound daunting? Some of these things take some time. Start with one or two of the suggestions and build from there.
Other than creating great content, networking is the best thing you can do with your time. Every successful blogger has a strong network of other bloggers. Everything is easier when you have a good network and you’ll make a lot of friends along the way.
Thanks Others for Links
When other bloggers link to you, take a moment to leave a comment and thank them for the link. They’ll appreciate the fact that you stopped by and they’ll be more likely to link to you again in the future. Everyone likes to be thanked.
Comment on Other Blogs
One of the basics of blog networking is commenting on other blogs in your niche. It’s a great way to start getting to know some other bloggers, plus you can help others, demonstrate your knowledge, and drive some traffic to your blog. Try to make some time each day for commenting.
Join Groups at MyBlogLog, BUMPzee, and Blog Catalog
Blog community sites are a great place to start networking. You can join groups and communities and get to know some other users.
Sure, we have all heard about Search Engine Optimization. But did you pay attention? It took me a few months to even fully grasp the concept. I just wanted to write. Ok not really, I want people to read it too and that is where SEO comes in.
Most bloggers initially set up there blog to be search engine-friendly, however, over a period of time your blog may develop the need for an SEO checkup to keep the blog optimized. There are a number of free tools that can help you to check the SEO health of your blog. For a list of some of the best tools, see Giving Your Blog an SEO Check-Up .
Improve the Structure of the Blog for SEO Purposes
Blogs can be very search engine-friendly, or they can be SEO nightmares. What have you done to prevent duplicate content, to create optimized page titles, to use better URLs, etc? By improving the structure of your blog you may be able to drastically increase your search engine traffic. WordPress users see WordPress SEO from Joost de Valk.
Use Custom URL Structure
Some blogs create URLs that are no help for search engines. WordPress users have the option to set up custom URLs that will be more search engine-friendly rather than using the number of the post.
Use Custom Slugs
WordPress users also have the option within each post to create a custom slug. How often do you use this feature? Try keeping your URLs shorter and full of keywords with this simple feature.
Give Each Post a Meta Description
The meta description may not have a big influence on search engine rankings, but it can significantly influence the click-through rate to your pages from the SERPs. The meta description is shown by most search engines to tell searchers what your page is about. Use the description to draw attention and increase the chances of a click.
Use Robots.txt to Block Duplicate Content
One of the most effective ways to control and prevent duplicate content is by using the robots.txt file. With robots.txt you can instruct search engines to ignore certain pages and types of pages (for example your archive or category pages) which means your posts are less likely to suffer from the penalties of duplicate content. WordPress users should see the article on Shoemoney about robots.txt .
Submit a Google Sitemap
The easiest way to get you pages indexed in Google is to submit an XML sitemap that lists all of your pages and posts. The Google Sitemaps Generator for WordPress is a great tool.
Don’t Add Posts to Multiple Categories
An easy way to prevent duplicate content is to limit your posts to one category. By adding it in multiple categories you will be adding it to more archive pages, which increases the chances of a duplicate content penalty.
You may have a great blog but if no one knows about it, then you just have a bunch of words. Marketing no matter how big or small can really improve your blog and get more visitors coming to check you out.
Social Media Marketing is one of the best ways to get free exposure for your blog. You can encourage readers to vote for you and make it easy for them by adding some elements to your posts, such as buttons or widgets for specific social media sites.
Use Niche Social Media Sites
Most bloggers that attempt to gain traffic from social media focus on the major sites. like Digg. Getting to the front page of Digg is no easy task, and it really won’t produce traffic that is very targeted. Niche social media sites will send lower volumes of traffic, but popularity will be more attainable and the quality of traffic will be better. You can find social media sites in your niche at this categorized list of sites .
Build Profiles on Major Social Media Sites
For targeting the major social media sites, building a strong profile is one of the best ways to improve your results. To build a profile you should be actively using the site on a daily basis and always keep your eyes open for great content that you can submit.
Give Something Back to Your Readers
All blogs provide readers with content. What else can your do for them? By giving something back to your readers you can do a better job of building the community around your blog and developing a relationship and trust with your readers. There are a number of possibilities for giving back to your readers, and some that are mentioned at other places in this post. You could run a contest, give away some free advertising, give away an e-book, basically anything that will add value to your readers above and beyond the blog posts.
Feature Your Best Content Somewhere on the Blog
Some of your visitors will not be familiar with your blog and they may not have seen your best work. Somewhere on the blog you should have a list of links to your best or most popular posts. New visitors will hopefully take a look and see the quality.
Write for Other Blogs
One of the best ways to gain exposure and to build some name recognition is to write for other blogs. You can either do so as a guest blogger or as a paid writer. Usually if you are providing a free guest post you will get a brief bio statement and a link back to your blog. When you are doing paid writing you typically won’t get the bio or the link, but the exposure will still help.
Run a Contest
You can create some excitement from subscribers and generate some buzz by running a contest. Of course, people like to win things, so contests are a fun way to satisfy your readers. You can either put up some of your own money for prizes, or you can get others to sponsor the contest, which has been done very effectively be a number of bloggers.
Participate in Group Writing Projects
Group writing projects are a good way to get involved with other bloggers, get a link to your blog, and get exposure to a new audience. Check out Group Writing Projects to find some new opportunities.
Do Some Statistical Analysis
Do you know what types of posts draw the most traffic and the best response from your readers? Do you know where your traffic is coming from and what terms people are using to find you in the search engines? Use a tool like Google Analytics to do some basic stat checking on your blog and implement what you learn.
Submit Your Blog to Directories
Directories can be helpful for allowing new readers to find your blog, and they can also be good for search engine rankings. There are literally thousands of directories, blog directories, and RSS directories that you could submit to. Unfortunately, you’d have to spend days of your valuable time to get it done. You can submit it yourself to the top directories, or pay someone else to do it for you.
Set Up FeedBurner’s FeedFlare
I’m going to assume that you are already using FeedBurner since it is basically a necessity. FeedFlare is a simple way to add some nice elements to your feed that will allow subscribers to interact and share your content. There are a number of options to choose from, including links that will submit and vote for your posts at all the popular social media sites. To set up your FeedFlare, login and click on “Optimize” and then “FeedFlare.”
Release Your Own Blog Theme
Do you have an attractive blog theme that people really like? Have you considered releasing it for others to use freely? This has been done by a number of blogs, and sometimes it is done right after upgrading to a new theme. That way you can give something away without allowing everyone else to look just like you.
Use Entrecard
Entrecard is a unique way to make your sidebar more productive. With Entrecard you can network with other bloggers and with your readers, and drive traffic to your blog.
Submit Your Posts to Blog Carnivals
One of the easiest ways to start building links to your blog is by using blog carnivals. You can submit one of your posts to a carnival on a specific topic and if the host decides to include your post you will get a backlink. There are carnivals on just about every topic you can think of.
Host a Blog Carnival
Another method for driving traffic to your blog is to host a blog carnival. In this situation other bloggers will be submitting their posts to your carnival, and sometimes those who are included will also promote the carnival once it is published. If you’re looking for an easy way to get some other bloggers to visit your blog, consider hosting a carnival.
Submit Your Blog to Web Design and CSS Galleries
If your blog features a unique and attractive design (not a free theme), consider submitting it to web design and CSS galleries. There are more galleries than you can keep track (there’s a good list at Virtual Hosting). These galleries can give you a great deal of exposure and send some traffic and links your way.
Encourage Bookmarks
Bookmarks are a great way to increase your repeat traffic. If someone has bookmarked one of your posts they obviously have some intention of coming back to it later. Make it easy for your readers to bookmark by using the del.icio.us tagometer badge or something similar.
Do you need a Media Kit for your blog? This is something that I have been asking myself a lot in the past several months.
Although I have yet to get a Media Kit for my blog, I am more inclined to have one made rather than to try and do it myself. This is for a few reasons. One is simply time. Two is that I would much rather have one made by someone who has done it before with success.
Cat from 3 Kids and Us comes highly recommended for creating Media Kits and truthfully is the person that I plan to go when I finally get ready to get my kit done. Her work is top notch and everyone that works with her, loves her. Check her out here.
Here are some templates or some information to get you started:
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