Blog To Great

Performancing Ad Network Opens

Make Money With PerformancingAds

    A new ad network opened this week, and it's open to all publishers/blogs, bloggers and focuses on 125×125 ad blocks. Named, Performancing Ads and owned by Splash Press Media they have a sales team in place to get advertisers aboard, so if you are trying to monetize your blog, you should go to their site to learn more.  This isn’t the first time Performancing have gotten into the ad network arena, they launched a network back in 2006 but closed it down last year during a period where they went through management changes and finally were sold.

Cool, A New Search Engine, CUIL Unveiled

     Some ex-Googlers are out to conquer their old team with a brand new web search engine unveiled recently,called Cuil (pronounced cool).  The Menlo Park, CA based Cuil has an index of over 120 billion web pages, making them the most comprehensive search engine on the web (Google won’t disclose the size of its index, but they claim to know about a trillon uniques web pages.  The super-secret search project was founded by search experts, husband and wife team Tom Costello (CEO) and Anna Patterson (VP Engineering) and were joined by Russell Power (technical lead for the serving part of TeraGoogle and spent two years working on Web ranking and automatic Spam detection project).  Much of the secret of Cuil how they index the web and handle the actual queries by users. Both are very costly to scale, and Cuil says the found a way to reduce costs.

How to Be a Great Guest Blogger, and Be Invited Back

     Being a great guest blog writer is important to your blogging career. But it's not easy to do well, especially the first time.  Once you worked on building your network of "blogger friends" you should be able to write on someone else's blog periodically (btw- reciprocate to them).  There are many points to consider, such as how to best blend your post into the host's blog, impressing & pleasing them and making the most of potential new traffic that you can receive from your guest post.  Below are some tips that you can use to improve your guest posting skills (let me know if you have other ideas/tips).

• Know the blog you’re posting on
  By far the most important point.  Just as you spend time continually learning about your blog's audience, make sure you know the audience of the blog you're posting on. Once you know them, make sure that you adapt your writing style so it appeals to the right audience.  If you’re going to write on a blog about advertising, don’t go on about blog design.  Don't lose your personality or blogging style, just adjust so that you conform to the blog’s style and audience.

Joys of Blog Work From Home

     A quick Sunday note.  I've had a number of new bloggers recently say that the number one reason  they want to blog and work from home is the ability to "work when they want to".  Well, it is true that you have the ability to set your own work schedule when you work from home,  but in no way does it mean that you don’t have to have established work hours.  By this I mean that a casual work schedule that allows you to come and go at will won't work.  To blog successfully, you will have to commit to putting in enough dedicated time to maintain a professional, great, profitable blog.   While working at home can be a good arrangement for you and your family, you need to be careful not to get too caught up in non-blog work during business hours. You'll have to put in more hours than you'd like to early on, and at some point you can determine how much time is needed to maintain your blog and all its writing, advertising, marketing and business obligations.  Working from home can also be a negative if you do not plan your time well and are not organized.  If you don"t set up a work schedule that you and your family can manage with. When you work at home, time is soooooo important and deadlines still need to be met.

Let's us know how you manage your "work from home" life.

Google to Buy Digg ???

   TechCrunch reports that Google is in final negotiations to acquire DiggDigg for around $200 million. Google was apparently in great acquisition mode for the last six weeks. The deal will still take several weeks and, because of ties to Microsoft the deal could still fall apart. Digg has a three year ad contract with Microsoft.  More here at TechCrunch.  If Google does, in fact, buy Digg the social voting site could end up being integrated in Google search and  Google News.  This would likely be good news and expand its readership.  Keep an eye on this story and the impact on your blog.

Google Adsense Program Changes- Good for Bloggers?

     Today,  Adsense publishers started to receive an e-mail from Google describing several recent ‘changes and improvements’ to the Google ad system, details were also posted on the AdSense blog.  The changes involve several new features that have been added to AdWords to give advertisers more control.  One of the biggest change is the introduction of ‘Ad Planner’ which permits advertisers to search for blogs/sites with particular demographics and consumer interests.  Advertisers can also target sites with a combination of both contextual targeting (having ads appear on pages with certain keywords) as well as placement targeting (targeting specific sites and ad positions on those sites).   There are no changes in features for publishers,  but it's going to be interesting on whether these changes impact bloggers bottom line. But it should help bloggers that want to target specific niches and certain demographics in their ad campaigns. With these changes, there’s now an incentive for blog writers to publish blog posts that target popular keywords to gain advertisers.  Conversely, it may hurt blogs/sites that have mixed topic formats and wide demographics.   Advertisers may feel their ad budget will not be as impactful at these types of blogs.  So, pay close attention and watch your results.  Check out the Google AdSense blog here for continual program updates. 

Please comment here on whether you expect to see a change in your activity from AdSense.  And, don't just AdVertise, Blog To Great !

Before You Post, Important Tips to Save You !!

     How often do you hit "publish" on your blog and then realized that you forgot something crucial?  Whether it's changing post layout, spell checking, final re-read or the extra sentence you wanted to add. You're not alone, it happens to every blog writer. So, to help prevent it from happening again, here's an easy checklist of things you should do before you hit publish.

• Read it over, did you type exactly what you meant?   Avoid the urge to type and immediately hit "publish". Always go back to re-read your blog posts to verify that what you had in your mind ended up in the post ! An obvious rule? Yes, but in the rush of blogging, it's often forgotten.

PPC, Pay Per Click Explained in Simple Terms

     A good tool for bloggers that want to monetize their blog is Pay Per Click (PPC).  PPC advertising is an great area that many new bloggers find hard to master. But don't worry, it's easy to do and a great way to draw traffic to your blog.  The way it works is actually simple, you open up a free account with a search engine (start with Google or Yahoo).   These two cover nearly 90% of of search engine traffic, spend your ad budget with them.  You then bid on advertisements for your blog with a list of words ("keywords") you want to trigger the display to readers of your ad.  You tell how much you are willing to pay ("bid") for each visitor who clicks on the ad and gets to your blog and set a daily maximum budget amount. The PPC search engine will then deliver visitors ("traffic") to your website.

See Your Future to Succeed

     Bloggers looking to make money through their blog often talk about their plans and what they will do to make their blog great and successful.  Like any new business venture, your blog will take more time and effort than you can currently imagine.  But, in order to succeed you need to make a contract with yourself to keep with blogging.  As we talked about on earlier posts, click here for one, putting plans in writing are vital.  I suggest you go further and sign an actual agreement, or contract with yourself.  This should help you stick with it for an agreed upon length of time (one year for example) during the "slow" periods when you might otherwise consider ending your blog venture.

Another idea is to spend time imagining your future with a tremendously successful blog and blogs.  Devote 5-10 minutes periodically and SEE yourself running one of the best blogs in the world, picture what your life would be like and what you would be doing.  Would your writing then be different, would you start other ventures, what would the blog look like, who would you hire?  Go crazy, the important thing is to see the success that you will have!

Don't just blog, Blog To Great!

Top 10 Ways to Make Your Blog Writing Convert Into Sales

     My top ten suggestions on how to make your blog posts better, you more authoritative and to turn your posts into selling tools -

• Write naturally, don't try to write like someone you are not.
• Use bullets.  It makes the information easier for the reader to absorb.
• Use direct terms when appropriate.  Buy this, click here, send me a comment, etc
• Be honest.  Everyone seems to exaggerate, but be honest.  Your blog reputation depends on it.
• Talk with, not at your readers.  Unless your Nobel prize winner, you're not exactly a re-known expert!
• Give them what they want (and then some).  Don't put opera posts on your money making blog (unless there's a lesson).
• Use good grammar and punctuation.  Your readers will notice and decide how smart you are.
• Give real examples on how your product or information will help your reader.
• Write well.  Your reader needs to understand you.  Check your sources and proofread.
• Ask for the sale!

Comment back with any techniques that you've used.  Don't just blog to sell, Blog To Great !