Using Tell A Friend Script To Drive Traffic

Your website is finally starting to get a little traffic. The results are in and your visitors think your web site it great. You're beaming with pride as you tell them, "Be sure to tell your friends." Certainly a few of your visitors will tell a friend or two, but what about all the other visitors who love your site so much? Have you made it easy for them to share your site with others? Have you provided a real reason for visitors to take a minute from their busy day and tell a friend about your site? This post will share a few tips and techniques for getting site traffic to really snowball by enlisting an army of people to spread the word, an army made up from your current site visitors.

If you want your site visitors to tell their friends about you, you have to make it easy. Actually you can't just make it easy; you have to make it super easy. Tell-A-Friend scripts are one way to make that happen. These scripts are simple and do not require complicated programming. As a matter of fact you can usually copy and paste a script right onto the intended page. Tell-A-Friend scripts are available in many shapes and sizes, but you will be better off if you locate a script with the ability to subscribe people directly to your opt-in email list. A few other things to look for in a TAF script are the ability for full customization, sending to an unlimited number of target recipients, recognizing and blocking invalid email addresses, and one that provides detailed usage statistics.

If you are looking for a PHP or ASP based Tell-A-Friend script, you'll start your search with http://www.hotscripts.com because this is a great source for both free and paid solutions. This website is very huge though.

To find a reliable PHP based TAF script, you will check:

http://www.hotscripts.com/PHP

If you are looking for an ASP based TAF script, you will check:

http://www.hotscripts.com/ASP

Finally, if you are interested in hosted services, You will check:

http://www.hotscripts.com/services

So now that you've got all your ducks in a row and have installed the perfect tell-a-friend script, let me ask you an important question. Why should someone tell their friend about your web site? Maybe the answer is obvious to you, but is it obvious to your site visitors? Will they do it just because you asked them to? It's likely your visitor isn't thinking of the benefits your site might present for their friends, so it's your job to tell them about it. I'm not suggesting you offer people some sort of bribe like a free ebook; you can do that if you want, but it probably isn't necessary and might not attract the kind of traffic you really need. But you could simply say, "Tell your friends about our newsletter about XYZ because it is interesting" or "Tell someone about the ABC newsletter because it will save them time and money".

If you make it easy for your visitors and give them a good reason, you might be surprised how quickly the word spreads about your site.

How You Can Win With Article Marketing

Who knew writing a few articles and giving them away for free could be one of the best things you could do for your own web site? This is the precept behind article marketing, and comprises the ultimate in "white hat" or honest and straightforward marketing techniques. With article marketing you provide what other web sites need, you give a reason for the search engines to send traffic your way, and most of all you give readers the information they seek. This chapter will briefly outline how article marketing works and what it can do for your web site.

There are two primary factors affecting your place on the search engine results pages, how relevant your page seems to a particular search and the number of quality links coming to your page from other sites. It is obvious a search engine wouldn't stay in business long if someone searched for "roses" and was led to a page about "muscle cars", so the more clearly your page can position itself as relative to a particular search term the better. Incoming links to your web page are seen by search engines as popularity votes, so the more you have from related sites the better.

But the key to both of these factors is found in the word "relevant". Posting an article on your web site that is optimized for relevance to a particular search term will go a long way in convincing the search engines to include you in the search results for that term. Submitting articles to related web sites with a link back to your own makes you appear popular with the right crowd, the "in" crowd of relevant web sites. Did you notice both of these activities involved the use of articles?

Article marketing is the practice of providing articles you've written (or had written on your behalf) to other web sites, blogs and ezines. These articles are provided for free, and in return you are allowed to insert a short bio and a link back to your web site. This bio is usually at the end of the article. Now if that link back to your web site leads to great content that is related to the article, you've just managed to kill two birds with one stone; you've shown your site is relevant and you've made a link to it from a related site so you've created the impression your site is popular within that niche.

You are on your way to being recommended by the major search engines and because of that, building traffic.

Article marketing truly creates a win-win situation for everyone involved and if you want to get your share, here are some of the top article directories you will submit your articles to get free traffic and backlinks to your website:

http://www.ezinearticles.com

http://www.goarticles.com

http://www.articlecity.com

http://www.searchwarp.com

http://www.articledashboard.com

Content Is King - Get More Traffic By Giving More Information

Everyone has heard the saying, so there is little disagreement that we live in the information age. It's also a well-known fact people look for information online more than ever before. In fact, searching for information on the internet has become so common that the name "Google" has become a verb; when you want to learn about a topic you simply "google" it. Also, people have a fairly open mind about where their information comes from; they're going to be interested in reading articles, blog entries and reports from just about any source, and you can be the source they look to. This is your laser targeted Traffic that turns into sales, over and over again as you build your email list.

"But wait," you say. "I'm not trying to be an encyclopedia. I just want to sell my product."
The truth is if someone wants to buy a product, they're not likely to go surfing the web. They're going to visit Amazon, eBay or one of the other well established online retailers. Unless you have the advertising budget of a small nation, you're not likely to pull too much business from those firmly established sites. So how do you get people to buy from you? Should you throw in the towel and surrender to the big online retailers? Of course not, and this post will show you one way to overcome competition from the big boys of the net.

So if people want information, and they're willing to get it from sites just like yours, then by all means give it to them. Give the people articles, give them blog entries and give them news. Tell them everything you know and then look up something more to tell them. Remember what was said, this is the "information age" and not the "product age". Give the people all that information, and while you at it give them information about how much they need your product. Tell them about designer jeans and let them know you sell designer jeans at rock bottom prices. Tell them about planning a garden and let them know you sell an info product about planting bulbs.

Don't try to "sell" anything, but just let people know you have something to meet their needs. If they don't yet realize they have that particular need, then give them all the information to let them understand their need. If someone wanted to buy, they'd go to one of the major online retailers and look for it. But if someone wants information, they will search the web and if they happen to find you, give the customer what they want.

Search engines love content, and so do your visitors! Fresh content will keep your visitors coming back to your website at their own will and you'll naturally get higher results at search engines. As the saying goes, "Content is king" and it will your best friend when it comes to traffic  generation.

Link Building Strategies to Build More Traffic

It sounds like the simplest thing in the world. Just find someone with a site that has content similar to your own and strike a deal, "You place a link to me on your web site and I'll place a link to you on mine." There was a time when this could be an effective way to generate traffic to your site as well as improve your search engine ranking. But for the most part, those times are gone. Unscrupulous web masters figured out how to abuse the system by creating link farms and other schemes with absolutely no benefit for the site visitors, and search engines got smart and put an end to the whole thing. So can't we benefit from reciprocal links anymore? Sure we can, but with a few caveats. This chapter will explore how safe linking practices can still help your site gain traffic, and do better in the search engine results pages.

So as you may have already guessed, search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN are skeptical about two-way links. Due in a large extent to manipulation of the system, these search engines have programmed their bots to penalize sites for unethical linking practices, even if there is only the suspicion of wrong doing. Where at one time a site looked popular if it was linked to by many sites, now that is a red flag. The search bots actually follow the links these days, and evaluate whether or not the content on both ends of the links is related. If it is related, everything might be fine. If it isn't related, or the bots aren't able to see the relationship, your search engine placements might be effected.

Basically, if anything you're doing even looks the least bit like you're trying to manipulate your search engine placements, you're likely to get dinged. So do you have to worry that a site links to you if they aren't based on a related topic? Technically that shouldn't be a problem; usually only the site placing the link will be penalized for an irrelevant link. Otherwise, it would open the door to a whole realm of sabotaging other sites by linking to them.

So if you want to avoid the famous "Google Slap" where you get knocked off the top of the search engine placements for what Google interperets as foul play, what is a safe linking practice? The answer is simple, "think naturally." Set up linking arrangements that appear natural and ask yourself, "Would I place this link if the search engines weren't a factor?" Chances are, if you're only linking to improve your placement then you could be asking for trouble. But if the link is there to truly serve your site visitors, then go for it.

After all, isn't that what it is all about?

How To Increase Traffic Through Off-Page SEO

With thousands of new sites coming online everyday, webmasters are getting more sophisticated in using on-page SEO tactics to rank favorably with search engines. Many also use dubious, "Black-hat" strategies in an attempt to fool search engines into thinking that their sites offer valuable content to human users. In order to combat the abuse of on-page SEO, search engines now give a lot of importance to off page SEO methods.

Off-page SEO refers to all the optimization techniques done off the website. This means search engines will rank your site on the basis of who is linking to your website. Gone are the days when all you had to do was exchange links with a couple hundred sites and your website would sky rocket in rankings. For good off page optimization, you need to plan carefully.

To begin with, try to obtain one way links to your website from respected or authority sites. These sites have a very good page rank factor with search engines. Page rank is a relative rank awarded to websites. A high page rank or PR is very valuable and obtaining one way links from these sites can be the single biggest boost to your off page optimization efforts. Try to find authority sites with a similar theme to your website and try to obtain a one way link to your website. You might have to pay them for this service, but it is well worth it. Try to also exchange links with a few carefully chosen sites that are related to your site in terms of content. It is also important to be linked with a number of sites of varying page rank. This proves to the search engines that your link building goals are based on getting relevant links to your website and are not determined by page rank alone.

Whenever you exchange links with a website or try to obtain oneway links, make sure you vary your linking text. If you use the same text, search engines will assume that you paid to have pages link to your website, or worse, will assume that your site is a Spam site. Getting plenty of content on your websites is also a great idea, as this allows deep linking to your site. Deep linking is when a site links to not just to the index page of your site, but also to several pages within your site.

You can greatly boost your off-page optimization efforts by using article marketing. Well-written articles can provide you one-way links from authority sites in a matter of days. If your articles provide links to inner pages of your website with varying link text, you can also achieve the goal of deep linking and varying link text. In order to get the best results using article marketing, write at least eight different articles, each targeting a different major keyword and each containing varying link text. Distribute these articles to a few major article directories over a period of three to four weeks. This will bring in organic traffic to your website and boost your off page rankings, all at the same time.

Search engines also value the length of time taken to build links. If you get all your links in one day, it signals a red flag with the search engines. Take your time building quality links to your site. Spread your article marketing over a few weeks. Try to get listed with free directories. These directories take several months to approve and post your site, so that helps towards slow link building.

Finally, make use of web 2.0 technologies to get links to your website. There are several sites like Digg, Delicious, Facebook, MySpace and even Craigslist. These sites also provide a lot of human traffic and are great ways to get your website listed for off page optimization as well as gain traffic. Be careful and follow the rules when you post on these sites to avoid your post being deleted. It is well worth the effort.

How To Get More Free Traffic With On-Page SEO

The concept of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has been around since 1997 with the rapid adoption of the Internet and its most popular search engines. In the early days of SEO, webmasters inserted keywords in the meta-tags of each HTML page they authored for Internet search engines to index and rank. Over time, webmasters discovered they could artificially increase a page's rank by inserting irrelevant yet popular keywords into the meta-tags. This abuse forced the search engine companies to adopt new ways to index and rank web pages and to reduce the dependency on the meta-tags inserted into the web pages. Most modern search engines now scan, index, and rank web pages automatically using automated crawlers with sophisticated algorithms. The search engine companies do not disclose their algorithms in an attempt to curb artificially high page rankings. In order to rank highly in most popular search engines today, webmasters must develop content that incorporates certain SEO techniques to take advantage of these new methods of page rankings..

Keywords are the single most important aspect of on-page SEO for the Internet. Therefore, before writing a single word of content, it is extremely important to develop a list of keywords that potential readers will be use to find the web page. Keyword lists on a variety of topics are easily found online. However, brainstorming keywords based on the subject of the written content can be just as effective. The importance of picking the right keywords is paramount to producing high-ranking web pages and should not be overlooked. The prominence, order, and density of keywords on the web page are vitally important in how search engines ultimately index and rank web pages. The title of the web page is the most important attribute of the web page and therefore should include one or more keywords. Next in importance for the use of keywords are any headers or bolded words in the content. Finally, keyword density within the body text should generally be roughly between five to twenty percent depending on the subject matter. Pages that contain keywords that are located close to each other also tend to rank higher.

The next most important factor affecting page rank is the usage of hyper-links within a web page. Links should be relevant to the content and care should be taken to choose relevant keywords to describe the links. The actual length of the hyper-link and filename can also affect the relevancy of the link to the web page. It is obvious that dead links should not be used, but often overlooked is the need to return to web pages after a certain time has passed to ensure the links still point to their original location.

As essential as the use of keywords and links are, there are penalties for use of "bad" keywords and links. Any vile language or ethnic slurs will definitely have a negative effect on page ranking. The practice of "keyword stuffing" should be avoided as most search engines can detect when keyword density has exceeded a certain threshold for a particular topic. Any links to inappropriate content and excessive use of cross-linking will also severely downgrade page ranking.

When attempting to maximize the amount of traffic to a web page, the importance of a web page's rank within the Internet's top search engines cannot be over-emphasized. While there are many SEO techniques to improve a page ranking, on-page content is certainly the easiest to control. Through the careful choice and placement of keywords and hyperlinks when developing content, a Webmaster can create consistently highranking web pages. Care must also be taken to avoid the pitfalls of keyword and hyper-link usage to minimize penalties assessed by most modern complex Internet search engine algorithms.

How To Drive More Traffic by Performing Website Maintenance

In order to protect your home do you spend time making sure everything is in repair? If you ran a shop would you take extra time making sure all your equipment is operating correctly? Operating a website is no different than maintaining a shop or taking care of your home, except for the fact that you're expecting thousands of important visitors every day. But what makes for a "ship shape" website? Is there some sort of routine maintenance you should perform? This Post will cover a few tips to make your site run smoothly and let your visitors feel comfortable enough to stick around.

One of the common problems site visitors come across is old, broken links. If you have linked to an outside source you might do well to check from time to time and make certain that link is valid. This is especially true if your link is to a particular page or a blog entry as these are famous for getting switched; the site and the entry might still be there, but if something about the link changes your visitors won't be taken where you wanted them to go. Some types of web sites are more likely to come and go, so you'll have to judge from experience how often to check for broken links. Internal links are just as likely to break, especially if you have links to photos or audio files; when you make a change to some element of your web site, think through the links you might have affected.

There are several online tools that can help you to check for broken links. Two of them are free and they provide a great service. You'll find them at http://validator.w3.org/checklink and http://www.dead-links.com/ If you're interested in a free software that works on your desktop, you'll find Xenu's Link Sleuth at http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html

Another way to maintenance your site is doing what we'll call "fixing leaks in the pipe". It's likely that you have certain things you want your site visitors to do, whether it is to visit an affiliate link, your own product, or sign up for a newsletter. The route from a customer's arrival at your site to the action you want them to perform is often called your "pipeline". Check for leaks in your pipeline since a leaky pipe could provide a place for you to lose potential customers.

Here are a few places your visitors might leak out from and never return to your site:

Do each of your subscription forms lead back to your site?

Are you using custom "thank you" pages or depending on autogenerated ones? Auto-generated thank you pages might not lead back to your site.

Have you customized your error pages with links back to working parts of your site? If a customer finds a missing page and ends up on a default "404 error" page, you may never see them again.

Are you giving away your traffic to web rings and link exchanges that don't have easy-to-find links back to your site?

Keep the little maintenance tasks under check so you don't miss any visitors and never underestimate the power of these little tricks. After all, competition is high on any traffic building campaign and it is small details what makes a difference.

What Is Search Engine Optimization?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is something that many people have heard of but few people really and truly understand. This is very unfortunate because as an internet marketer one of the best things you can do for your business is to thoroughly understand what Search Engine Optimization means and how you can go about becoming an expert at it.

The single biggest way that Search Engine Optimization will help you is in generating targeted traffic for your website. Not just traffic mind you, but targeted traffic. This means that people that visit your website will actually be looking for what it is you have to offer and you can probably understand conceptually how that is going to be much better for you than non-targeted traffic. In addition, if you have a website that is properly optimized for use in the search engines you are going to save money because you will not need to spend as much on other methods of traffic generation like pay per click advertising.

Now that you understand how Search Engine Optimization is going to be useful to you it is time to get into some of the basics of the SEO process. There are generally two parts to SEO that you want to be aware of, "on-page" optimization factors and "off-page" optimization factors.

On-page optimization factors are things that you can change on your website in order to make the website more friendly to search engines. These are things like keyword density within paragraphs as well as keyword placement within the title of the webpage, Meta tags and the bolding, underline and italicizing of keywords within the webpage. These are all factors that affect how search engines view your webpage and getting these just right is one of the keys to proper Search Engine Optimization.

While onpage factors are important, anyone that has done SEO work before will be able to tell you that it is the off-page optimization factors that really make the search engines love your page. In terms of off-page optimization, the primary thing I'm talking about is link building. Whenever another website links to your page they are in effect casting a vote in favor of what your page has to offer. The more websites that link to your page, the more votes you get and therefore the more favorably many of the search engines look at your website. There are entire online courses dedicated to the concept of link building as it is truly one of the most important parts of proper Search Engine Optimization and if you get just one part of the whole picture right; make sure it's this part.

Recent trends in Search Engine Optimization have been set in by a lot of search engines in order to combat the "black hat" techniques many dishonest marketers have been using in order to get their websites good rankings. These trends have made it much more difficult to get your site well-ranked in search engines and indeed it can take months before you even get a sniff of the top. One way to combat this is to use blog posts regularly or make entries on web 2.0 sites (Craigslist, Digg etc.) as these posts get indexed on a daily basis by search engines. You can then place links on those posts that point back to your website and get it indexed that way.

SEO in 2013 also looks like it's giving way to SMO (Social Media Optimization). With the growth of social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook etc, it's important to increase the interactivity of your site by offering integration with social networking technologies. This will help your site in search engine rankings as web 2.0 gathers momentum.

There are a number of ways to make Search Engine Optimization work with you and one of the keys in doing so is to be creative. You can never rely on the search engines making it easy for you and for that simple reason you need to be continually thinking of new and innovative ways to get your websites indexed and placed high in search engines. In many different ways it is really you that determines the potential of your site.

How To Monitor Server Downtimes

It certainly is irritating when your web server is down, because you simply lose visitors and potential customer. But did you realize you might be losing more than visitors and potential customers when your web site can't be accessed? According to Vanessa Fox of Google, "If the host is down when Googlebot tries to access your pages, then those pages may disappear from the index until Googlebot can crawl them again." But how do you know your server is down without constantly checking your sites? This chapter will share a few free services to help you evaluate your downtimes. From there you can decide if it's time to look for another server solution.

Unless you have no life and want to monitor your web site by hand, hitting the refresh button every five or ten minutes, you will probably be interested in a tool to monitor the process for you. Fortunately some great tools exist to do just that, and the best of them are free. These free services can monitor your downtimes 24 hours a day and 7 days a week and they will let you know if there is a problem either by email, RSS or even on your cell phone through SMS.

Here are some of the best free services to monitor your server downtimes, in no particular order:

http://www.siteuptime.com/

http://host-tracker.com/

http://www.mralert.com/

http://www.montastic.com/

Once you know there has been a downtime issue, you can check in Google's free webmaster tools to see if the Googlebot had tried to index your site while it was down. Google webmaster tools are at http://www.google.com/webmasters/ and provide a variety of other useful services as well. Simply click on the Webmaster Tools link and register your site if you haven't already. Once registered, you can check the "crawl errors" link to see if there have been any problems. You can also check the frequency of visits by the Googlebot  to see how long the windows are between crawls; if you site is not being crawled frequently, obviously you won't have to worry about occasional short downtimes.

You don't have to worry too much if the Googlebot does happen to miss your site on a particular crawl because the site was down. Vanessa Fox also stated that Googlebot will give your site a few tries before actually dropping it from the Google search result pages. But even though it isn't a true hit and miss issue, you will still be wise to monitor your server downtimes and make adjustments when necessary.

It is obvious that if your website is down, people will rarely give you another chance. If your website gets down too often, it will be in your best interest to move your website to another host before you start active promotion.

Understand How Your Traffic Campaigns Perform

In today's information economy, it can be said the person with the most information wins. The same would hold true if you want a successful website; you must have information to analyze if the things you're doing to promote it are effective. But what are the types of website analysis systems are available to you, and which of them will best suit you needs? Is there an analysis technique that is more accurate than others in helping you decide which promotions are actually getting results? Should you use your web host's default statistics program, or are there other services you should consider? This chapter will give a brief overview of web analytics and their uses in the measurement of your website elements' contribution to your business objectives.

There are basically two types of website analysis in wide use today, log file analysis and page tagging. Log file analysis reads the logs a server records on every transaction, but this might be inaccurate due to the widespread use of page caching. The desire to outsource web analytics and expand the available data has led to page tagging, which basically uses a JavaScript (PHP or ASP in some cases) to count the number of times an image (which may be invisible) is served to a visitor. This JavaScript can also pass along information about a particular page and the visitor.

Many web hosts offer a default statistics program to provide you with basic information. Awstats and Webalizer  are most likely the most popular stats engines available today. Keep in mind your web host may update different types of information at different times, so if you want a complete picture of what has been happening at your site you may need to wait for information which is a few days old.

A recent trend has seen a move away from these systems in favor of the more detailed information available through Google Analytics. Google Analytics is located at https://www.google.com/analytics/ and as you have probably guessed, is operated by Google. This system offers a wide array of analysis tools, including reports for Marketing Optimization and Content Optimization. Would you like information to help you understand how your marketing efforts are working, and where there might be a link in your funnel? It's all there, and it's all free.

With any of these services, you will at least consider tracking your referrers. After all, once you start promoting your site, you'll use different methods and it is important to track which ones work and which ones don't. With that information in mind, you'll then repeat the steps that lead to success and stop spending time for strategies that don't get results.

Remember, the player with the most information wins!

Why Many Blogger's Managing Their Email List With Autoresponders?

You can send your emails and newsletters by hand but I think you will find that this is not very efficient. It is very time consuming and if you miss someone or take too long getting back to them, they may forget about your site and you will have lost business.

A great way to remedy this is to use autorepsonders to make sure you get all your emails and newsletters back to people in an appropriate time. If you have a domain that you have paid for, there is probably a type of autoresponder script on the server that you can use but if not, there are also companies that offer autoresponder services that can help you set this up.

The email list is also a great way to keep them informed of new items, updates and more on your site to bring them back again and again. Be sure you put your subscription box in a great location on your blog so that people can easily see it and subscribe.

Building an email list that your visitors can opt in to is one good way to start building and collecting information. You want people to return to your blog so that they will click on affiliate links or ads, buy your products, etc so that you make money. To do this, you are going to have to know what they are interested in reading so you can put it in your blog.

Why use an autoresponder?

An autorepsonder can really be helpful to you by saving you time and benefiting the people who visit your site. What are some ways that an autoresponder can help you?

They can:

Send an automatic thank you when someone subscribes to your
newsletter

Address the subscriber by name

Send out a specified number of follow up emails

Send follow up emails at prescribed intervals (daily, every two days,
weekly, monthly and so on).

Information on "Paid vs Free Traffic"

Due to the rapid usage of the Internet becoming a norm throughout the globe, various groups of people are now able to market their products and services by setting up a website. However, the best-designed web site will not produce income unless there is traffic directed to it. There are a couple of options to obtain website traffic. One is through free traffic and the other one is through paid traffic. Let's examine the differences between the two. You can then decide whether the former or the latter is a suitable choice for your website.

Free traffic, as the name suggests, implies that you traffic to your website free of charge. The most common method of obtaining this involves using Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques. When you optimize your website, search engines view your site as being useful and relevant. This in turn, leads to increase in rankings for your keywords.SEO methods are great for obtaining free traffic in the long term but it might take as long as six months to a year to see full results. Alternatively, you can use strategically written articles and get them published at article directory sites that have high volumes of traffic. This works to bring in organic search engine traffic within a week. However, as your article moves out of the main pages of the article directories, your traffic is likely to taper off in two to three weeks. Writing and publishing articles once a week should keep free traffic to your site from dropping off. Free traffic can also be obtained through various traffic exchanges. Traffic exchanges can quickly bring in a lot of traffic but will most likely be untargeted.

The other option of getting visitors to your website involves paid traffic. If you need immediate traffic to your website and have some money to spend, paid traffic is a very good option. However, careful planning is required to ensure the greatest return on your investment. The most common and immediate method of obtaining paid traffic is through payper- click listings with all the major search engines like Yahoo, Google, Miva etc. Depending on the amount you are willing to spend as well as your target keywords, pay-per-click traffic can bring in some of the best results due to precise targeting of visitors to your site. The advantage of paid traffic is that you are not affected by search engine algorithm changes and as long as you have money to spend, you will gain traffic to your website.

The best thing to do would be to use a combination of both paid and free traffic. Optimize your website to bring you traffic over the long term and to position your website really well in the search engines. For the short term, get your traffic through a combination of paid searches and article marketing. In time, you will be able to obtain almost all of your traffic for free and you can slowly phase out of your paid traffic options if you so choose.

About the Blogger "Earnings" tab & Enabling AdSense on your blog

The Earnings tab in Blogger makes it easy to enable AdSense ads on your blog. Once your account has been approved, Blogger retrieves your earnings data so you don't need to visit the AdSense dashboard to access basic earnings information.

AdSense Report

Once you start generating AdSense impressions, you'll begin earning money when people click on ads that appear on your blog. The earnings report (visible when you click the Earnings tab) includes a drop-down bar with Today, Yesterday, Last 7 Days, This Month, and All time.

Selecting an option will retrieve the relevant report directly from AdSense.

All time

If you're an existing AdSense user, you'll notice that Blogger created a new channel (with the URL of your blog) in your account. If you have had AdSense ads on your blog before using Blogger’s AdSense integration to insert ads into your blog, note that All time will retrieve data only from the time you connected Blogger to your AdSense account.

This does not affect your overall AdSense reporting, available directly from AdSense.

Terminology

The AdSense report visible from the Earnings tab contains basic information about how many ads have run on your blog, how many clicks were generated, and how much revenue you've earned. Each term in the report is defined below:

• Page views: A page view is generated every time a user views a page displaying Google ads. We'll count one page view regardless of the number of ads displayed on that page. For example, if you have a page displaying three ad units and it's viewed twice, you'll generate two page views and six ad unit impressions.
• Clicks: The number of times the ads were clicked on in the given reporting period.
• Page CTR (Click-through rate): The number of ad clicks divided by the number of page views.
• CPC (Cost per click): The average amount paid by the advertisers for each ad click.
• Page RPM (Revenue per mille): This is revenue per 1,000 page views. RPM = (Page views x CTR x CPC) / 1,000

Enabling AdSense on your blog

To enable AdSense for your blog, click on the Earnings tab from the drop-down menu on your dashboard.

You’ll then see the AdSense overview page. If you haven’t signed up for AdSense yet, click Sign up for AdSense.

Here is how you can signup for Adsense -

On the next page, select whether you'd like AdSense on the Google Account you're currently signed in to, or if you'd like to create a new Google Account.

Complete the application form, review the information you've provided, and then agree to terms and conditions.

Ads will not appear on your blog until your application has been approved. Once you receive confirmation that your application was approved, you can control the ways the ads show up on your blog through the settings on the Earnings tab at anytime. It’s up to you whether or not to show ads, and where on your blog to display those ads (sidebar and posts, just sidebar, or just posts) if you’re using Traditional templates. Dynamic Views users can skip this step, as Google has already optimized ad placement for Dynamic Views templates.

Introduction to Web Traffic

There are an enormous number of ways that you can make money online. Whether you are selling advertising space, selling actual merchandise, or selling information, you determine your success or failure by your ability to get people to visit your site.

If you started a business and put all of your advertising on the side of dirt road with minimal traffic, then you probably won't see any fruit produced by that effort. In the same way, you want your store to be located in a busy part of town where casual shoppers linger. Your best business may come from people who just dropped in while window-shopping.
The key to succeeding in any internet related business is traffic. You must find ways to lead potential customers to your front page. If you think you can rely solely on the search engines to put you at the top of their lists, then you may be setting yourself up for failure. Search engines use a complicated formula when deciding which pages show up first.

Unless yours is the only business of your kind in the world that has a web site, you probably won't get to the top of the list. If for some reason you do, then you probably won't stay there for very long. Corporations buy the rights to search phrases and generally pay big money for the opportunity to be highlighted at the top of the list.

One interesting point to keep in mind is that, the more traffic you have at your site, the more likely you are to slide up in the search engine results. The question then, is how do you get that initial flow of customers, clients, or readers to make your website a place that they regularly visit?

For example, as a basic rule, as you plan and design your website, you should be looking at other sites that are in the same genre as yours. Maybe they offer similar or complimentary services. Maybe they provide information about the same topic. Try to build relationships with the operators of these sites. Leave comments on their blogs and participate in forum discussions, leaving a link to your own page in your signature.

You may want to consider adding a blog to your website. Create an RSS feed that notifies subscribers whenever you have updated information. Be diligent about keeping the content on your page fresh and you will find that you begin to get repeat traffic. Others will begin to link to you from their own pages and list you as a valuable source of current information. Just as in any traditional business format, building relationships and networking will be vital pieces of your success.

The important thing, as you are beginning, is that you have a strong understanding of the fact that it takes some work. The traffic flow at your website won't happen by accident. It takes careful planning and sharp execution to make that hit number go up.

How To Track Blog Visitors

There are a lot of programs available for tracking how many people visit your blog, many of which are free programs. Awstats and Analytics are two very popular forms of programs used for tracking visitors. There are also quite a large number of tracking programs that need to be paid for.

Google Analytics      

The Google Analytics is a free tracking program that works by putting a tiny bit of code into the template of your blog. This code not only tracks how many visitors you have but it even tells you the keywords that brought them to your site. You will also be able to tell where the visitors came from and where they go to next. It can also give you suggestions for other themes and keywords that can be used to bring people to your blog and help you track and research the ones you already have.

Tracking programs work in a number of different ways. For instance, many of the free visitors tracking programs require that you place on your blog page a logo or banner. This is what tracks the visitors, but the biggest problem with these trackers is that most of them allow anyone who clicks on these logos to also view your statistics. To avoid this you will need to upgrade your program to a higher level.

Awstats    

What is Awstats? It is an advanced web log statistic program. If you want to keep a record of all the activity that occurs on your blog you should use this program analyzer. This web statistic analyzer offers its user a lot of good information that can be quite useful. Normally anyone using Awstats have their own domains.

What Is Web statistics information?   

We have already established that to sell advertisers a space on your blog you need to keep track of how many people visit your site. To help you in this area we will explain just how useful web statistics can be to you. When we talk about how many visitors you have we are not talking about the number of hits your blog receives but instead the number of actual visitors.

Hits are how many times someone loaded a single element of your page. One visitor can hit several elements during a single visit. For instance, a person may hit or click on five separate elements on your blog such as ads, banners and images but all the hits were made by the same person. So what you are looking for and what is more important is how many people actually visit your blog not the hits they make once they are there.

One of the things that you are actually looking for is called the "unique visitors". This is the number of visitors that you receive on a daily basis. The count begins the first of each month and a person who visited your blog the day before is not counted twice in this statistic.

Another thing that web statistics show is how many times each person visits your blog. Of course, the more times someone visits your site the better. Return visits show that people are enjoying the contents of your blog enough to keep coming back. Many of the statistics packages that you can receive will have a statistic called "traffic not viewed". This is how many times your blog has been visited by search engines.

Other information on web statistics

Here are some other facts that are important and interesting that web statistics provide for you. First, it will record how long each visitor spends on your blog. The longer a person stays on your site means they are enjoy what they see and is certainly a good sign. It will also show you the pages that are being visited; this will help you know which pages are the most popular. In turn, it could help you add related topics that peaks reader's interest.

You can receive a monthly history of all your visitors. This will inform you as to whether the traffic visiting your blog is increasing, decreasing or staying the same. You will even be able to tell where you are being featured on the web because these statistics will provide you with the outside links that people used to link to your blog.

These statistics also show which keywords visitors are using in the search engines that are bringing them to your blog. You may even be a little surprised at some of the keywords being used. One thing is for sure, these statistics will help you get a great price from advertisers for space on your blog.

Different Ways of Generating Income Through Your Blog

Once you have your blog set up and all the basic first content created, you are ready to begin making money. You need to know how to follow the proper steps to increase traffic to your site and to create revenue from your blog. How do you make money from your blog? There are actually many different ways of generating income through your blog. They may not all work for you. Some options include:






 Donations
 Contextual advertising  
 Selling advertising space 
 Affiliate programs 
 Product or service sales



You will need to consider each option to help you decide which one(s) will work best for you and how you plan to carry it out.

Donations     

You can do donations with Paypal by putting a payment link or button on your blog. This makes it simple and easy for people to donate to your blog. Just keep in mind that if you expect people to donate, you need to be giving them something that they feel is worth it. There are also ways for you to set-up offline donations to your blog.



Google Adsense

Another way to make money from your blog is by using Google Adsense. This is called contextual advertising. Google has made this famous and it is now a very acceptable and common way of advertising which is offered by several companies, not just Google. When you use google to find a keyword, you will see ads that contain other keywords that are similar to the one that you were searching. Many people are inspired to click onto these related ads.





Sell advertising space.

Another way to bring money into your blog is by selling advertising space. Pheedo and Adbrite are two systems that allow people to run ads on your blog although; new providers are on the rise. You set a price and advertisers bid for a space. Of course, the first thing you need to do before selling advertising space is to prove that your blog is popular enough to attract readers that can see the ads.

One of the best ways to show exactly how popular your site is would be by keeping up with the amount of people that visit your blog. You should also make sure that you promote your blog in a way that it will rank high in the search engines. This is a vital step in making your blog popular.

Join Affiliate programs

Affiliate programs can make a great contribution to your blog. These programs help bloggers to earn extra money through the promotion of products from other people. This is a great way earn money because there are so many different types of products on the market for sale. ClixGalore, Commission Junction, Clickbank and LinkShare are the four major providers used, but there are others available.

Being a part of an affiliate program is easy. All you need to do is sign up. When you use one of the major providers you will have several different products on hand, but you can choose to use an individual product if you prefer. After this is done you simply use emails, forum posts, signatures and blog post to promote these products.

How to choose an affiliate program?

When you decide to use an affiliate program there are two things that you need to be concerned with. One is the amount of commission you receive and the other is Residuals. When you are looking at commission the highest percentage rate available is the best. Some even pay as much as seventy-five percent commissions. This is a really good rate.

Residuals are programs that continue to pay each time the person you introduced uses their services. Therefore, the longer the residuals last the more money you have a chance to make. Affiliate directories provide most of the information for their programs. These directories will tell the blogger how many sales have been made and explain the commission rate along with other statistics that will help you. Below is a list of affiliate directories that can be very helpful


  ClickBank.com

 AssociatePrograms.com

 AffiliateMatch.com

 Refer-it.com

 AffiliatesDirectory.com


Another way for bloggers to bring in money is by making post; this service is offered by several companies. The four most well-known are Blogitive, BloggingAds, Blogsvertise and Payperpost.

Sign up for paid blogging

If you do not sign up with one of the services listed above, then you cannot get paid for blogging. This is a very simply process that involves supplying some basic information. This includes your name, Paypal address and email address. Of course, you will need to provide a link to your blog and you may be asked to place your blog in a category with a description. After visiting your blog it will be determined whether or not you meet the criteria of the service provider and their advertisers. It is recommended that you begin by using your most popular blog to sign up with to better ensure that you qualify. If its a new blog or one with little traffic you may not be accepted.

Paid blogging assignments

When your blog has been accepted by a company they will give you assignments based on the profile of your blog. It will be up to you to accept or decline the assignment. Different companies use different methods for their assignments. For instance, for some sites the blogger bids for the post. The winner is normally given a specific subject to post on. You will have a particular keyword or phase that you will need to use which is usually a product or company name. You will also be required to include a set number of links for the post.

The simplest assignments are the ones where the blog ad companies provide you with the text they want you to use. All you have to do is cut and paste. Others will ask you to write the post and you will be given anywhere from a day to one week to complete it. You will then be required to keep the blog post running for one year. These companies also have different methods for making payments. You could be paid immediately after completion, once a week or once a month depending on the company.

Sell your own product

There is one more way for bloggers to make money; it is by selling your own product. The best way to do this is to buy the rights to a product that you can claim as your own. You can then sell this product. You will find quite a few websites that offer this service. You can even repackage any private labels rights articles that you have purchased and sell these as a new product.

It is even possible for you to use the contents of your blog to create enough material to have something to sell. You would be able to use this content to create a book by the end of six months if you post to your blog on a daily basis. All you have to do is put all your updated information in book form by adding an introduction, resource list and of course a conclusion. Two great publishing sites you can use to sell the book would be TodayBooks.com and Lulu.com or if you prefer you can make your own PDF.

Create your own Cafepress shop

Have you ever thought about signing up with Cafepress and producing your own products for sale? Use the information from your keywords and other tools to know what people are interested in. You can then create mugs, T-shirts and other crafts to match these interests. Descriptive links and metatags need to be used to help the search engines find your blog and to visit your shop. This is a great way to bring new traffic to your blog and generate income.

How To Create Your Own Content for Your Blog

Once you have your blog set up and you have the proper content on it, you need to make sure you keep regular content flowing on the site. There are different ways for you to do this.

First, you need to know where you are getting your content from. You have basically two options: buy or hire someone to write the content or create the content yourself.

Create your own content 

The easiest and cheapest way is to create the content yourself. Blog posts are short (usually 250-500 words) and they don't typically have to be very technical & unless your blog is a technical blog. You can easily create this content for yourself if you have the time. When creating your own content, keep these points in mind:

1. Keep it short & about 250-500 words

2. Start with a catchy title and headline to get their attention

3. Get right to the point with the beginning (you only have a few seconds to catch their attention on  the web)

4. Answer the reader's question of  "What's in it for me?"


Creating your own content is a great way to save money and participate more in your blog project but you shouldn't do it if you are a poor writer or if you take so long getting it done that you are not efficient and can't keep the bog regularly updated. If you are not a writer, there are some other options for you to consider.

Use free content

 

Another option for you to consider if you don't want to write your own is to use free content. There are several different ways to acquire free content for you to use if you know where and how to look. Article directories provide a steady supply of fresh content. You can copy and paste this, or simply have an RSS feed which updates every time fresh content is added to the site. Some of the big article directories are EzineArticles.com, GoArticles.com, IdeaMarketers.com and ISnare.com. There are also many others available for you to use.

Purchase content

 

Another option for you is to purchase original content for your site. You can hire a freelance writer to write articles for you. You can find service professionals on sites such as:

Elance.com

Guru.com

Rentacoder

Etc

Each of these works in the same basic way and will help connect you to a service provider who can do your job for you and usually at a low, affordable price.

Wherever you acquire your content, always watch out for two things:

1. Plagiarism

2. Duplicate content

Plagiarism will cause obvious problems. You should already know the reasons why to not do this. Duplicate content on your own sites can cause you to pay fines or even have your sites/blogs shut down so be careful of this as well.

Things You Should Look Into Before Starting A Blog

Blogging continues to gain in terms of popularity, as one of the best methods in promoting a business, or a way to earn money from the internet. A lot of people get involved with blogging on a daily basis, with the hopes of being able to copy the success of others who are already receiving a lot of money in their bank accounts through their blogs. If you are one of these blogging aspirants, the first critical step you can take is by committing yourself on your goal of getting started with blogging, and the next equally important step is to consider things you should look into before starting your own blog.

Many people who have told their success stories about making money with blogs may have made it sound like this kind of online business is pretty simple to get started with. Although it is true, there are also some challenges you may encounter along the way. Aside from that, you also need to accept the fact that even though this type of money-making venture is done through the internet, similar to offline businesses, it would also require your time, patience, perseverance, and commitment in order to gain success on it and derive substantial monthly income.

In getting started with blogging, you need to know that you have to decide the topic which all your blog posts will be based on. It should be a topic, which you are very familiar with, since you would have to constantly provide updates, to continually attract people in visiting it. The topic can be about your skills, sports, your talent, pets, or any other topic, which you think you can consider yourself an expert of, and at the same time, can attract a good number of people in purchasing certain products.

Aside from considering the topic, you should also ask yourself if you would be willing to write a number of articles for it, in order to provide the blog with content. If you are not, you can actually hire article writers who would provide you with the relevant articles for your site. Just make sure they write quality articles that provide relevant information, since it is one of the key points which attracts people to your blog.

Another thing you need to consider is the type of online business you want your blog to have. You can choose between having companies put their advertisement banners and links to your blog, selling certain items on it, offering services or getting involved with affiliate marketing.

Keep in mind that you have to spend time in deciding which type of the online money-making opportunities you want to get involved with before you start writing in your blog, so that you won"t be wasting your time, and possibly your money in making use of blogs. Once you are done with all these things, you also have to search for a web hosting provider, as well as a blogging website, in order to get started with it.

Can Anyone Earn A Full Time Income Through Blogging?

Many people are now turning to the internet with the hopes of being able to earn money from it, without having to leave their homes. There are a lot of opportunities a person can take advantage of through the internet, one of which is blogging. With this, many people are now considering to get involved with blogging, with the hopes of earning a substantial full time income through it.


You should know that blogging can earn you huge amounts of money, but it does not necessarily mean that once you get involved with it, you will immediately see substantial amounts of cash deposited into your bank account. Just like any other business you can get involved with, you need to invest your time, effort, and possibly some amounts of cash, in order to get started with it on the right track.


On top of that, you also need to commit yourself in attaining your online goals and be motivated in achieving them. This will allow you to be able to make profits from your blogs quickly after you start posting. If all goes well, it will be able to constantly provide you with more than enough money to last for a month.


There are many ways you can make use of blogs to earn huge income of cash online. One of the most popular methods is to become an affiliate marketer, in which you would be selling certain products through your blog. Every time someone purchases an item through your blog, you will earn a certain amount as your commission. There are many advantages you can enjoy with affiliate marketing, such as not having to go through creating your own product.


Many people are not able to jumpstart their online businesses, since they get stuck with product creation. With affiliate marketing, you won't have to go through that, since all you have to do is to select the product that you want to sell, and promote it on your blog.


Selecting the product is also one of the important things you need to go through with affiliate marketing. The product should be related to the kind of content your website has. Thus, deciding on the kind of topic you want to have for your blog is another crucial step you have to go through. In this step, you have to carefully select your topic, since it will influence the kind of products or services you can promote on your blog.

One of the keys in earning a substantial amount of income through blogging is getting a lot of people to visit it. There are a number of internet marketing strategies which you can make use of to achieve that, such as article marketing, email marketing, and many more.

As long as you are persistent, patient, and committed enough in achieving your goals with it, blogging will eventually help you in earning a full time income through the internet.

How to Make Money Through Blogging?

How to make money through blogs? This is a question that is often asked by a person who is just getting started to get involved with online business marketing. It is possible that he was able to hear about it from his friends and colleagues, or he could have read news that reported a person raking tons of money by simply making use of this tool so called blogs.


                   First of all, blogging can be classified into two categories, which are personal blogs and business blogs. A personal blog means that it is used by individuals to share their thoughts and feelings to people about certain things. On the other hand, business blogging would mean that the blog is used to make money over the internet or used as a marketing strategy being used by certain companies to promote their website or the products that they have.


                   Since the question pertains to the things involved in making money with blogs, then it is best to discuss the type of blogs  that would enable a person to earn money through it. Money making with blogs can be done in a lot of ways. Firstly, you  can make use of your blog as a way to attract people to check out your own online business. You can also conduct your  own business through it.


                    It should be noted that if you would like to use your blog to earn money, it should have good internet traffic, since it is the most important key in gaining success with blogging. To achieve this, you may want to employ certain internet marketing strategies to promote your blog.


                    Once you are attracting a good number of readers on a day to day basis, you will then be able to sell certain spaces on your blog for advertisements. You can contact certain companies and offer them to post their banners on top of your blog for a fee. If they know how popular your blog is with their target market, then they would realize that it is a good idea to promote their businesses to your own little web page.


                  With your blog, you can also get involved with affiliate marketing, in which all you have to do is to promote certain products on it, and each time an item gets sold, you will be able to earn money in the form of commissions. With this, you don't have to deal with creating your own products, since the products are already ready for sale.


There are indeed a lot of benefits you can derive when you make use of blogs to earn money through the web. To get started with it, all you have to do is to identify the type of products or services you wish to promote on the internet so that you will be able to post entries related to these goods. Once you have established this, the next best thing to do is to learn techniques to make your blog as popular as possible, since the more people visiting it, the more chances you would have in earning more money with it.

Keyword Research Tools for Bloggers

To keep your content updated and your blog running smoothly, you will need to research properly. This is a major key to making money from your blog. Its very important that you see where your blog will fit in the already growing and expanding market. Proper market research can help you do this.





Questions to ask:

1.  Who am I and what makes my blog unique?
2.  What special skills or products can I sell?
3.  What other blogs are being published in this area?
4.  What am I passionate about?

These questions will help you find your niche market. You need to have a unique selling point. As long as you have this, it doesn't matter what your niche market is.

There are many great places you can do research for your blog. Just look at the world around you, your family and friends, television, the news and other places to find inspiration and ideas. Then of course, there is the internet. Having the proper keywords related to your topic is also important to having a successful blog and making money. So how do you get the right keywords to use in your blog texts? There are some tools available on line to help you with this.

Free keyword research tools

There are many free keyword search tools out there you can use for research to help you find the right keywords to use in your blogs.

Overture keyword suggestion tool 

 

Overture has a large network of web portals and search engines, including
Yahoo!, MSN, AltaVista, AllTheWeb, Dogpile and many others. Overture has
recently become Yahoo Search Marketing.

All you need to do is to enter your search term, wait a few seconds and you will
get words, two-word, three-word and longer phrases that relate to your original
query.

 

GoodKeywords

 

Good Keywords is free and easy to use. It uses tools provided by other search
engines to do keyword research automatically. It is much faster than searching
by hand and will save you time and money.

 

Google keyword tool

This is another popular one and like Overture, it is meant to help clients find the

right keywords for pay per click ads. This tool also allows you to search for
multiple keywords and phrases at the same time.

Other free keyword research tools

DigitalPoint has a free keyword
suggestion tool that compares results from Overture and Wordtracker

Ebay keywords   This shows what people have been searching for on Ebay.

Google zeitgeist  shows what people have been searching for on Google

Google Suggest 
 
suggests other search phrases as you type. A Firefox extension called CustomizeGoogle

uses this functionality and also shows how many results there are for a particular
search phrase.

SEOBook  This site has a number of tools for search engine optimization, including a keyword research tool.

NicheBot  returns ten clickable keyword links in a chart which shows their popularity and their potential effectiveness.

Paid keyword research tools

If you are really serious about your research tools and you have the room in your budget to allow it, you might consider some paid research tools.

Keyword Elite

This one is great for finding unique keywords that you might not have been able to find with other keyword search tools. It can also help you find unique niches you hadn't thought of before. It is well worth the money for any company looking to blog for profit.

Wordtracker

This one is very popular and you have probably heard of it before. They even have a free trial use so you can check out how it works before you pay. It offers a lot of advanced features that allow you to get tier keywords. You can even choose your subscriptions from one day to one year so you can pay for it only when you need it.