Monday, October 31, 2011

What a Reasons Why Your Blog Doesn't Make Money

Every blogger has that dream, someone in their head, of making money from their blog whether it’s just a bit to have a night out or to completely replace their income. Problem is, not many bloggers make a single penny for their hard effort they put into their blog. Well, I’m going to tell you what I believe are the five major reasons why your blog doesn’t make money.
5 reasons you blog does't make money-
1: Your Not Focus

Focus is a major element of blogging that may people lack; it’s complete discipline that has to be learned. To make money from your blog, you have to stay focused on the main goals for why you’ve started it and how you plan to eventually monetize your platform. Staying from your goals will send you down a path where you’re speaking to an audience that doesn’t care which creates a false sense of community that will never buy from you.
2: Your Promoting the Wrong Products

The product is everything. Your content becomes a vehicle for promoting products once you’ve gained traction online but it’s far too common to see a blogger choose items that are going to make them a lot of money per sale vs. what actually fits on their blog. With enough time, people feel burnt out on your offerings because you’re always throwing new products at them; they catch on to this, leave and now your blog fails to make money.
3: Your Reaching the Wrong Audience

Speaking of audience and talking to the wrong people – far too many bloggers write for other bloggers. The problem comes when fellow bloggers, in the niche, regularly comment on your blog; this sways the way you speak to your true community (the real buyers) so you end up appealing to these bloggers rather than the community at large. In time, you’re off your track, changed your tone and lost focus in turning your blog into a profit because you are too overwhelmed trying to “keep up” with other bloggers.
4: Your Confusing the Readers

There are niche sites and authority websites; the later makes you the most money because of the sheer size of an audience you can bring in but niche sites can certainly make a boatload of money. Unfortunately, many bloggers start to sway from their topics and end up confusing the readers. One day you’re promoting a product and the next you are trying to get them to sign up for a service – stick with only a few options for your readers and drive it home; don’t confuse them.
5: Your a Fake

This one isn’t really meant to be an attack but there are far too many people that are completely fake about their blogging. What I mean is that they setup a blog and pretend to be experts in their topic yet all they do is regurgitate information over and over again – people can see through this. Sure, you may eventually make money with enough traffic but you’re not going to get the right kind of traction to make any decent amount of money. Instead of trying to chase some niche you don’t know – go after something you do and become the master of that.

99 Practical Marketing Ideas

Has a new book out in stores. Visual Marketing is a must have resource for any small business owner in need of some creative marketing ideas. In Anita's new book you'll find 99 examples of marketing campaigns that cut through the clutter and bring attention to small businesses in unique and compelling ways. Purchase your copy on Amazon or at Barnes and Noble bookstores.

Google Launch AdWords SMB Partner Program

Google announced a new partnership program for AdWords advertisers that is designed to help small and medium-sized businesses reach new customers using AdWords. It's called the Google AdWords Premier SMB Partner Program (PSP).

The program connects what Google calls its "trusted and experienced" partners with businesses to create, manage, and optimize AdWords campaigns to help businesses reach more customers and maximize the potential of advertising budgets.

YouTube Is Second Highest Searches Website

YouTube is the second highest most searched search engine
after Google. Getting your local business listed
in video search is essential if you want your
business to be found.

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Search Engine Marketing With PPC: Tips for Beginners

Pay per click (PPC) is a quick method of getting your website listed in search engine results pages (SERPs).

Rather than waiting for your optimized web pages to get picked up by Google and the other top engines, you pay to have your website listed in special sections of the SERPs for given keywords.

When you use PPC marketing and get your link placed on the SERPs, it is not the same thing as taking the top spot on the page for a specific keyword.

Since paid links are placed along the top of the page and down the side with special highlighting or background, they are clearly distinguished as paid advertisements to to searchers.

Those who get on that first page through SEO will be listed underneath in order of ranking.

Just because paid links are separated on the page doesn't mean they don't get clicks. In fact, many people click more of those advertised links than others listed below because they are the first ones they see or because they seem to be more official because someone cared enough to pay for them to be listed.


There are some searchers who aren't as likely to click on ads placed by PPC because they feel they are just advertisements, there are many who do feel these links are more likely to give them value and they will click. Once they do place that click, you are on the hook for your bid price on the link.

Just as the name of this marketing strategy implies, you pay for every click that goes through from the search engine pages to your website.

This is why PPC has to be taken very seriously. All of these measures have to be taken before you even start placing bids and spending money with this type of marketing:

1. The website to be listed in the ads must be of very high quality and packed with valuable information.

It must be easy to navigate, well designed, aesthetically pleasing, and stacked with information or products that others will really want to read.

2. Keyword research must be completed to make sure the best keywords are targeted.

Every keyword must be tightly related to your website in some manner. Searchers typing in that keyword should find what they want when they click through to your website. Otherwise you are just wasting your time because people will click through, not find what they need, and click right back out. You still pay for their clicks.

3. Keywords with moderate to high searches but with low competition should be selected.

If you get into a battle with very competitive keywords you will pay a lot more for clicks and will be less likely to make it to the top positions on the SERPs.

4. A clear PPC budget should be drawn out and followed closely.

It is easy for some people to get so swept up in the battle for traffic that they spend way more than they ever stand to make from the traffic coming in. Or, they spend so much on a couple keywords that they cannot afford to continue campaigns with other keywords.

It is easier to keep a level head if there is a clear budget that you are determined to stick to.

When starting out, go through all of these steps before you start spending money with PPC. You will avoid a lot of costly beginner mistakes.



Wednesday, January 26, 2011

What SEM Services Offer Organic Web Marketing

Organic web marketing is the best form of search engine optimization. That may seem like a bold statement to make; but it is the truth. Driving pre-qualified traffic to your website is much more profitable than driving thousands who aren't interested.

Initial Analysis

These six questions will help you understand how your current marketing efforts are affecting your business. Ask yourself each question and answer honestly; no one's watching.

Really take the time to analyze each question and decide on actions to take to create the results you want.

* Am I getting enough traffic to my website?
* Where does my current traffic originate?
* Is my current traffic prequalified to visit my website?
* Are my conversion efforts paying off?
* What am I doing to increase traffic or conversions?
* Am I spending too much on SEM?

Your answers to those questions will help you decide whether to hire one of the many SEM services at your disposal. Research and time will help you find the service that best fits your needs. Don't settle for the first affordable service you find, make sure they understand your business and your marketing needs.

Define Your Goals

Goals and objectives help determine the type of marketing techniques you use. Traffic and page rank require much different techniques than conversions and sales, for example.

The primary goal of your organic web marketing strategy will go a long way in helping you decide which SEM service to hire.

Set short term objectives and long term goals. Goals need to reach as far out as six months while objectives are shorter steps to achieve the ultimate goal. Each objective should be set as a stepping stone toward a higher goal.

Define Your Budget

Not everyone can afford a huge marketing campaign, and that's OK. Prices often range from the very inexpensive to the elaborate, depending on the SEM service and the work required to achieve the end goal. Define your budget with a little breathing room so if it goes over a little, you'll still be in business.

Talk with each SEM service you consider hiring to make sure they understand your needs as well as your budget. Narrow your selections down to one or two companies then make the final cut. Don't settle for anything less than the best.

Define What's Right for You

Each business is different and so are their marketing needs. Small business owners often require different marketing techniques than larger, more popular businesses. Understand what's needed in your organic web marketing campaign and decide what's right for your marketing strategy before you hire anyone.

Choose the Best Organic SEM Service

You have a lot to think about before actually hiring an SEM service. Review the questions posed in this article, and then define your goals and budget.

Goal setting is probably one of the most important steps, because any good SEM service is going to ask about your marketing goals.

SEM services offering organic web marketing strategies are all over the Internet. Choosing the right one for your marketing efforts is as simple as doing the research necessary to figure out what you need. Take your time and choose the right company the first time.

5 Steps To A Great SEO Campaign

The first real step to anything is research, and lots of it. The most important step to any SEO campaign is keyword research.

The first step to consider is the niche you are in, and the products or services that you are promoting. You should come up with a list of potential keywords that your customers would use to find you on the web.

After that you could use the Google keyword search tool to analyze your list, checking the competitiveness, number of monthly searches and the strength of the competitors currently on page one.

A competitive market analysis is the next important step you should take. After you have your final keyword list, create a spreadsheet with all the keywords, and then list all the competitors from page one of Google.

You could use a program like SEO quake to collect some of the data that you will need, such as their page rank, number of indexed pages, inbound links, whether or not they have a site map and much more. This will tell you how difficult and how long of an SEO campaign you will be embarking on.

Next step should be the on page SEO factors of your website.

First and foremost is content, if you are not providing quality content that solves people's problems then your efforts will be in vain. Great content will keep your visitors coming back on their own which will greatly assist your SEO efforts.

Make sure all the on page dynamics such as header tags, meta tags, alt tags for images and HTML code is done correctly.

These are the simple things that improve your 'findability'. You also want to ensure that you have a proper site map created and submitted to the search engines, this will increase your chances of all your pages being properly indexed.

Number four is off page SEO strategies.

The biggest and most important overall here is back linking. Google views every back link your site has as a vote for your site from someone else. The best back links you can get are called one way links. One way links are where another website links to you without you having to link back. Good examples of this are article marketing, blog commenting and directory submissions.

Reciprocal linking is where you link out to website a and website a in turn links back to you. These are also good links but you should only focus on the ones targeted to your niche and those having a higher page rank than you. Good back linking takes time and effort, this cannot be accomplished over night.

You should also avoid any link scams, link farms or questionable linking strategies. If you have to stop and wonder if it's ok to do it then it probably isn't.
The last step that is very crucial to your SEO success is the overall promotion of your website. There are several ways of effectively promoting your products and services via the internet.

1) Video marketing
This can be promoted in conjunction with your website or separately for added exposure.

2) Email marketing
This allows you to keep track and communicate with your customers and potential customers.

3) Web 2.0
These are blogs, hub pages, wikis and such. Also a great source of quality back links for your site.

4) Article marketing
If done correctly this will establish you as an expert and help you to generate back links and additional traffic to your offers.

5) Local search marketing such as Yahoo local and Google places
If you have a business in the offline world you certainly want to use this method to promote your business. Google places for instance typically will come up first in the search results.

These are just a few of the strategies that you can use to begin a successful SEO and web promotion campaign. The most import step you will take is to take action. Everything you do should be with the intent of growing your business.