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Blogging and Affiliate Marketing

I want to start by stating the obvious, to make money blogging you need visitors. But once you get visitors what is the best way to make money? One method is to provide relevant ads on your site. You can do this by using affiliate marketing programs and advertising marketplaces. These services pay publishers based on:

• When an ad gets clicked (CPC)
• Or, when an action is performed (CPA)
• Or, an ad gets displayed a certain number of times (CPM)

There are a number of different services available that use different methods. Some offer video advertising, while others use images, banners or in-line text that a publisher can use to advertise.

Using a variety of advertising methods is usually the best way to make money blogging.

As a “publisher” (someone who puts an ad on their website) signing up is usually free, fast and easy. Once you sign up for an ad network or affiliate advertising community, your site is reviewed for approval as a publisher. If approved you can pick advertisers and how you want to display the ads that you feel fit your content.

This list of affiliate programs and advertising marketplaces is provided with short descriptions and links for more information on each advertising network and their advertising programs.

CPC ads / Text link ads / Image ads

Google Adsense
Google’s AdSense is probably the most used advertising network on the internet. To start publishing ads all you have to do is sign-up. It is free, fast and with a little knowledge placing the code into your website or blog is easy. Website publishers of all sizes can display relevant Google ads on their website’s content pages and earn money. This is a pay per click type ad that pays you as visitors click the links.

Chitika
Chitika is another popular ad network for making money on your blog. Sites looking for an AdSense alternative or AdSense compatible solution can use Chitika for their full-service on-line advertising network. One cool thing that Chitika offers is the ability to only “…display an ad when a visitor finds your site in a search engine”.  So if a repeat visitor comes to your site via a bookmark, or they type in your domain name directly, the Chitika ads will not be displayed.

text-link-ads
Text-Link-Ads supports websites that use server-side processing. You can use it on a static site (htm), but TextLinkAds is really well suited for any site that uses PHP, ASP, PERL, Ruby on Rails, etc. To ensure that only relevant links appear on your website, you can choose to approve or deny any Text Link Ad prior to the links being published on your website or blog.  You can display Text Link Ads on the same page with Google AdSense, Yahoo! Publisher Network, and… other contextually served ads.

Kontera (contextual advertising for your blog or website)
Kontera has a wide variety of ad formates: ContentLink Flex, ContentLink Video, ContentLink Billboard, ContentLink Image and ContentLink Text. All these methods of advertising are displayed in a small to medium sized pop-up window that is displayed when the in-line text link is rolled over.

LinkWorth
I want to mention two products LinkWorth offers to publishers: LinkAds and LinkWords.  LinkAds is a text based advertising that directs a visitor to a specific advertisers. LinkWords are embedded directly into a keyword depending on an advertiser’s preferred keyword strings. When a visitor to your website mouses over the “double hyperlink”, an in-line advertising window is launched to display information about the advertiser’s product or service.

Blogs RSS Feed

Feedburner ads / Google AdSense
Since Google bought Feedburner, you configure your blogs feed via Google AdSense. There is some flexibility on how the ads are displayed: each feed item, every 2 feed item, every 3 feed item or every 4 feed item. Among other settings you also have the option to display on top or on the bottom of the feed item.

Affiliate Networking

Commission Junction
Get paid for every sale and lead you generate. Commission Junction is the largest affiliate network in North America, powering almost 50% of the top 500 web retailers affiliate marketing programs and operates worldwide. Commission Junction has a network of advertisers they call the, “CJ Marketplace” using a text link and image style advertising.

Link Share
Link Share is another affiliate marketing and Lead Generation Network. Link Share offers a number of products for publishers: Merchandiser Product Feeds; Dynamic Rich Media (DRM); Flex Links for video, widgets and Flash content; and Mobile Links. You get paid a commission when a sale is made or when a lead is acquired. The sale can also be tied to a specific action such as filling out a form or downloading a trial.

Google Affiliate/ DoubleClick Performics Affiliate
First, the Google Affiliate Network (affiliate network) is separate from DoubleClicks DART for Publishers (DFP). The Google Affiliate Network provides a network of advertisers and publishers. To join you have to submit an application that is reviewed by a Google Affiliate staff member. If you are approved, you can apply to a variety of advertiser programs. Advertisers must first accept your offer to advertise their products or services. Once an advertiser agrees to accepting your site, you will have the ability to add the advertiser’s banner or text link on to your web site or blog. You’ll be paid on a cost-per-action (CPA) bases for leads or other action.

DoubleClick
“DART for Publishers is a comprehensive Web-based technology that enables websites and networks of websites to manage online ad serving and reporting. The system architecture, hardware, and software are maintained and updated by DoubleClick. DART for Publishers uses DART technology. -source, Google employee”

Affiliates -independent Cost Per Action (CPA)

Amazon Associates
Advertising Amazon products by using links or banners. When you add these links and banners to your web page and visitors click on them from your page, you can earn up to 15% on all purchases (CPA) made during their shopping session.

Ebay / eBay Partner Network
Getting paid from eBay is on a cost per action (CPA) bases. So you need either a bid, purchase or registration.

Product promotion posts

payperpost
Do you like to blog about products? Get paid to write about web sites, products, services, and companies. An advertiser will post an “opportunity” and if you qualify for the opportunity you can submit “take this opportunity”. If your post is accepted, you earn $15.00 for each post that provides your opinion and feedback to advertisers and consumers.

blogsvertise
Blogvertise is a pay per post type system that pays an average of $5-$15 per post. If your blog is approved, the blogsvertise administrator then assigns writing tasks they want you to mention in your blog. Your blog post does not have to endorse the product or service, just mention the advertiser in your blog and link to the advertiser’s website in the post.

Advertising Marketplaces

buysellads
Buysellads is an advertising marketplace for small to medium sized website owners/publishers. I feel this service is best suited if you have already established some traffic and you want to sell ad space on your blog.

ShoppingAds
ShoppingAds focuses on displaying products on your website. When your visitor clicks on the ad you can make money on a CPC (cost per click) or CPA (cost per acquisition) basis. You can run with Google AdSense and is compatible with all other ad systems.

BidVertiser
BidVertiser focuses on merchants bidding for ad space on your site or blog. They offer: Banners, Buttons, Inline Ads and Skyscrapers Displays.

Banner Advertising, Picture Advertising and Video Advertising

adbrite
Adbrite is like most advertising networks offering a variety of display ads, text and banner ads. But they also have a few interesting products like Full Page Ads and BritePic ads that allow you to monetize photos on your site with interactive text ads.

valueclickmedia
Display Advertising – ValueClickMedia runs an ad network of advertisers. They are also an affiliate type network with a variety of standard banners, pop-unders and rich media that you can use in a CPM and CPC payout structure.

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Social Networking

Social networking is changing the way people work and play online. Social networking sites are nothing new to the internet, in fact you probably heard of Geocities and Usenet, two early social networking websites. But unlike Geocites and Usenet, today’s social networking websites like: mySpace, facebook, digg and the recently popular LinkedIn and Twitter, appeal to a broad range of users that go beyond teenagers.
From the graph below you can see a sharp increase in “social networking” based on search volume.

Social Networking Trend - source, compete.com

What is social networking?

Generally a social networking website is an online community that is based around either professional or personal relationships.

If you visit a social networking website, you will find the majority of sites are created around a niche and membership is usually free. Once you join you will create a profile based on both personal and professional information. When your profile is completed,  you can:

• Join groups.
• Chat.
• Discuss topics in a community forum.
• Post news or articles.
• Search for other members with similar interest.

Why do people use social networking sites?

The appeal of social networking is different for everyone. On a personal level it is a great way to meet interesting people with similar interests. On a professional level, social networking sites have become a great way to:

• Expand a company’s online brand.
• Promote business articles.
• Promote blog posts and blogging.
• Keep current on the latest news.
• Watch the competition …ok “spy” on the competition.
• Meet colleges.
• Find employment.

From the points above, I want to discuss blogging. Blogging is huge online and social networking websites are a great place to promote a blog. But to really understand how big blogging is, I’ve gathered some information starting with the three most popular blogging platforms WordPress, Blogger and Typepad.

popular blogging software: Blogger, WordPress and Typepad

Interesting stats:

• Unique visitors Blogger -#28,147,310 (2/08-2/09)
• Daily estimate search for keyword, “blogger”: #1,716
• Unique visitors WordPress -#22,147,374 (2/08-2/09)
• Daily estimate search for keyword, “wordpress”: #6,466
• Unique visitors Typepad -#9,611,366 (2/08-2/09)
• Daily estimate search for keyword, “typepad”: #11

Note -The Unique Visitors metric only counts a person once no matter how many times they visit a site in a given month. Unique Visitors are typically used to determine how popular a site is. (stats from–compete.com)

Now add those statistics to the an estimated 175,000 new blogs every day; the total as of 8:23 CST on June 27, 2008 is: 209,593,000 (source -Technorati’s count on February 11, 2008 via: youdesignit.blogspot.com)

So with social networking you can promote: a blog, yourself, find contacts, find a job, promote articles and meet interesting people …and more.

Most popular social networking sites

The recent serge in online social networking also has a lot to do with how social networking sites are adding new features and languages. Sites like Facebook have seen a huge increase in popularity as they expanded internationally, while simultaneously improving user control over content.  Recently facebook’s efforts have resulted in huge growth, overtaking mySpace.

Facebook and MySpace unique visitors

Interesting stats:

• Unique visitors Facebook -#73,787,766 (2/08-2/09)
• Daily estimate search for keyword, “facebook”: #355,929
• Unique visitors mySpace -#53,066,785 (2/08-2/09)
• Daily estimate search for keyword, “myspace”: #366,765

To help demonstrate how big facebook and mySpace have become, here is a graph the compares the unique visitors of mySpace, facebook and Google.

Unique Visitors For Google, Facebook and mySpace

Interesting Stats:

• Google unique visitors: 130,285,302 (2/08-2/09)
• overall daily search estimate for keyword, “google”: 445,684

Two more popular social networking sites used to promote articles, blogs and news are Digg and Stumbleupon. I’ve also added a niche site that focuses on developing business contacts, the social website is called LinkedIn:

Unique visitors to Digg, Stumbleupon, LinkedIn

Interesting Stats:

• Digg unique visitors (2/08-2/09): #33,433,760
• LinkedIn unique visitors (2/08-2/09): #11,228,746
• Stumbleupon unique visitors (2/08-2/09): #4,418,609
• Daily estimate for keyword, “digg”: #1,204
• Daily estimate for keyword, “LinkedIn”: #4,204
• Daily estimate for keyword, “stumbleupon” : #1,074

Flickr, Photobucket and Webshots are three social networking sites related to photo sharing:

Unique visitors for: Flickr, Photobucket, Webshots

Interesting Stats:

• Photobucket unique visitors (2/08-2/09): #24,470,242
• Flickr unique visitors (2/08-2/09): #23,769,885
• Webshots unique visitors (2/08-2/09): #4,565,611
• Daily estimate for keyword, “photobucket”: #27,828
• Daily estimate for keyword, “flickr”: #24,227
• Daily estimate for keyword, “webshots”: #5,392

Two social networking sites for blogging communities are BlogCatalog and MyBlogLog:

Unique visitors for BlogCatalog and MyBlogLog

Interesting Stats:

• blogCatalog unique visitors (2/08-2/09): #1,898,783
• MyBlogLog unique visitors (2/08-2/09): #955,648
• Daily estimate for keyword, “blogCatalog”: #53
• Daily estimate for keyword, “mybloglog”: #49

Finally, “at this time”, the hottest social networking site is called, Twitter.

Social networking site, Twitter

Interesting Stats:

• Twitter unique visitors (2/08-2/09): #7,935,441
• Daily estimate for keyword, “twitter”: #8,074

There are many reasons why someone will use social networking. For business it can mean additional exposure to brand and products. As an individual, a social networking web site may offer an online community with other people who share common interest. Either way, the social networking style website has become very popular with men, woman and childrren …the numbers don’t lie.

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Blogging Tips

The sad truth is your website might be hacked and you don’t know it! That’s right, hackers will hide the links that are only visible in the source code. What this means to most people is thousands of spammy links are generated from a hacker’s script that is hidden in your code. This is not just annoying, but Google will penalize a site with these hidden links! Your ranking for keywords will drop and all the while you may have never see any signs as to what was causing it.

To find out if your blog or website has hidden links, or parasites, here is a link to a free blogging tool that will scan your code and let you know if you have been hacked. Just go to: Unmask Parasites

If your WordPress blog has been hacked, here is a article on how to find and remove the script: remove hackers script. It is also has some good tips on prevention, so I suggest taking a look even if your site is clean.

Next, make sure to back up your database regularly. I use a WordPress plugin that I set to automatically email me a backup of my WordPress database once a week. I also set my email client to filter the email into a folder I created, this way it is out of my way; but there if I need it. There are quiet a few WordPress Backup plugins, but here is the one I use – WordPress Backup

Finally, here is a site that has some good posts on Blog security. It also touches on other social media websites that might have a security hole. Take a look at – Blog Security

Checking to make sure your blog is clean of hidden parasites that a hacker puts on your blog or website, is easy. The challenging part comes if your site has been hacked. However removing the parasites are crucial to improving your site’s performance and organic ranking. So, if your site has been hacked, take a deep breath and follow the links I provided, they will help you find the hacker’s script. Once all is clean, back up your WordPress database on a regular bases and from then on it is just a matter of keeping up on the latest hacking schemes and security holes.

Hope this helps –happy blogging

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The world of blogging is all about consistency. Everyone know this, but in the long run it is easier said than done. What usually starts with a bang usually ends with a pop …going something like this, “I’m going to write one post a day”.  As time marches on there is usually an amendment to that declaration, “I’m going to write two posts a week”. Later, thisis also modified, “What’s the rush …one post, one month. Slow and steady”. Sadly that is not usually the end of it. Most bloggers find life just keeps getting in the way and soon the, “one a month” turns into one a year …and that does not cut it.

So how can you keep writing when life gets in the way? Accountability and competition are two strong motivators to blogging:

1. After deciding what is a realistic goal, write it down and put it where you can see it everyday.
2. Pre-schedule your times and days you plan to write. Put them on your calendar.
3. Say it out loud telling someone you see on a daily bases.
4. Turn it into a friendly competition. Find a blogging buddy with similar goals. Make sure to subscribe to their blogs RSS feed. This way you can keep tabs on each other. This will compel you to keep up the writing, knowing someone is reading and watching your feed as you try to match each other posts for post.

Blogging takes time and perseverance requiring consistency over a long period. Accountability and competition are two strong motivators, so use them to compel you to write when life gets in the way.

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I’ve been targeted by hackers who broke into my blog added a script that adds hundreds of hidden links. I found some of their malicious code in one of my word press files and I’ve switched to a  generic layout while I try to plug the security leak. So, if you should see hundreds of spam type links on my blog, just know I’m working on a solution. Arrrrr, what a waist of my time!!!

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Business Networking Techniques

The advantages of networking come from the relationships developed during meeting and events. I was attending a business meeting the other day and the panel was discussing how to successfully network at a small business meeting. They were diving home the point that,

at a networking event make sure to meet new people, go outside your comfort zone and limit talking to your friends.

They stressed not to ask for business the first time you meet someone and that networking is a long term process that takes time.

I think we all agree that these points and suggestions are true! To be successful in networking will require a long term commitment that initially gives you the opportunity to meet new people; but eventually might lead to new business. However in terms of successful networking, I felt the panel lost sight that “an acquaintance” does not equal knowing someone; or in other words, that “just” knowing someones name will not equal any business.

There are many  networking tips to effective networking, but one important networking basic to keep in mind is, when going to a networking event take half your time to learn more about those people you think you might “already” know. A good test is, do you know their name and business -but that is it. Do you know things like, where are they from? where have they lived? what is their favorite type of music? …Etc. If you don’t they are not friends, yet.

My point is, ignore the business and learn more about those casual business acquaintances. This means learn more about know the people who you just kind-of know. Remember, ‘it is quality not quantity”.