Blog To Great

Business of Blogging; Tips from Five Top Bloggers

Nowadays, with so many folks experienced at blogging and social media, and everyone with any opinion having a blog, you may wonder if there's still room for your blog.  Since there's a big difference between folks periodically posting on a blog and those who have the "blog passion" and have made it their full time job, it's good to hear from some of the successful bloggers out there.

Recently, BusinessNewsDaily talked to five successful bloggers to find out how they began, the work behind their posts, and for some advice you can use on what it really takes to transform a part time blog into a full time professional operation.  

Included in the discussion are a wide range of popular blogs, including; Boing Boing (a quirky directory of wonderful things), Extraordinary Mommy (a wonderful blog for busy moms) and one of the best personal finance blogs, Wise Bread.

Read more @ businessnewsdaily.com 

 

Blogger's Dilemna - Is Working from Home for Everyone ?

BLOG TIPS - As a blogger, you know that working from home has several advantages for you and your working efforts; freedom, no boss or supervisor, more time available, a flexible work schedule, no limits on income, etc, to list a few.  But, with those positives come challenges that not everyone can conquer in the world of blogging.  And, you may have unrealistic hopes for working from home.  Your readers become your boss/es, you may have less time until you have a staff, among other surprises.  A great post at Ad Marketing Pro focuses on some of the more notable challenges that you will need to face at some point when you decide to focus on blogging full time and work from your home.

Isolation-   Do you live alone?  If so, you will face isolation.  You won't have the colleagues and co-workers to share ideas, consult with, or ask advice.  You'll still need that type of input, so you'll have to get it.  Don't become a loner, you need to re-charge and get strength from people you can relate to, or for the social aspects of networking.

More @ AdMarketingPro.com

AFFILIATE PROGRAMS For Profitable Blogs

Blog Tips- Affiliate networks are third party websites that list affiliate programs.  Affiliate networks act as middleman between the affiliates and the products owners.  When you sign your blog up with an affiliate program, affiliate networks handle everything between the affiliate programs and the affiliates.

Two of the most popular affiliate networks are Share A Sale and ClickBank.   You can find profitable affiliate products on there websites by looking at how much activity particular product has.  When you visit ClickBank, under each product name, you'll see “Grav”, with the higher the gravity, the better.  And, ClickBank has a refund policy, if you're not satisfied with the product you picked, you can receive a refund.  This way, you can also purchase the product to determine the quality before you recommend it to your blog's readers.

GOOGLE Adwords Resource Center

BLOG TIPS - Social media and best blog site design practices has helped you and your blog already, but have you taken the full advantage of web advertising for you blog / small business?  On line advertising is typically the most mis-understood and under-utilized area that you should use to grow your business.  Well now Google has launched an improved effort to help small business owners with paid advertising to make it more effective for you.

Recently Google announced the kick off of their AdWords Small Business Center.  It's designed to be a resource and knowledge center that you can utilize to learn and understand AdWords best practices and obtain key information about what you need to know to run a successful AdWords account. The information is provided in various levels; beginner, intermediate and advanced, so that you can get the maximum benefit no matter what your experience level.

Tips to Grow Into a Successful Blogger

BLOG TIPS- No blogger in the blog-o-sphere can say he/she wasn't a n immature blogger and knew less about blogging than necessary to be successful.  The current A-List bloggers also began as an immature blog-spert.  No fear, because it's all part of the learning curve, the process of improving your blog.  Before you can get to the mature blogger level you need to work through the early stages. You can't, nor should you try or want to pass these early steps.  Since there remains much to learn for successful blogging, it's important for you, and your blog /s to grow - adapt - change as you go.  As the newness wears off, you see and learn other things, parts of blogging that you didn't know existed.  Even in this faster-paced social networking and Twitter universe, blogging plays an important part and has new methods and techniques for all bloggers to learn.

Sponsored Posts for Increased Blog Revenue

BLOG TIPS - With your blog, or blogs, up and running another money making method to consider are "sponsored posts".  There continues to be discussion over whether these type of posts are ethical, you need to decide how you feel about the issue.  Under "sponsored posts" you advertise to your readers another blog,  web site, business or a link for money.  It's certainly a touchy subject that could do harm to your blog and impact its' credibility. 

Once you determine if it's right for you and accept the arrangement only as a revenue generating system, you're able to market directly to your contacts to get paying sponsors, or use outside firms to help you find advertisers.  If you decide to go direct, you should be able to generate more revenue per post, but it does take time and effort to find sponsors to advertise on your blog or site.

Affiliate Marketing, Great Revenue Techniques for Your Blog

BLOG TIPS - Certainly a popular method for bloggers to make money, affiliate marketer is one of the most effective ways to advertise online and is one of the easiest ways for you to make a profit online. Affiliate
Marketing is a simple agreement between a merchant and a blogger, the affiliate, to allow the use of the blog for the promotion of the merchant’s products.  It's accomplished by a simple link to the merchant’s website.

For that, the merchant will pay you a commission on all of the sales generated by your blog / site. Every time a reader clicks on the link on your blog and makes a purchase you'll earn your  commission.

Affiliate marketing programs are said to be win-win situations for both the merchant and the affiliate (blogger) because of the pay-for-performance arrangement. Both the merchant and the affiliate get some benefits in the affiliate marketing deal. For the merchant, they get a wider market and more prospective customers for their product or service.  The more affiliate sites a merchant has, the higher the traffic their product / service gets which may become actual sales.

Live Nation's New Affiliate Program

BLOG NEWS - Concert promotion company, Live Nation has launched their own affiliate program  through Commission Junction, good to consider for your blog, but if you're a ticket broker or reseller, don't bother trying to sign on.  The huge firm says in its “Advertiser Details” page at Commission Junction: “Ticket brokers and other companies involved in the resale of tickets are not permitted. Companies, websites or newsletters that promote ticket presale passwords or access codes are not permitted.”   The company's only quietly launching their site, by advertising and taking applications on their CJ page only, while leaving their own official affiliates site empty, with a “ Live Nation Affiliates Program coming soon!” header.

But before you rush to sign on, note that LN is offering only 1.5 percent commisstion on sales, considerably lower number than the industry average of around 7%. So, bloggers should consider that for a ticket purchase of $350, you'd make just $5.25.

If you're interested in signing up, bloggers must first register with Commission Junction to participate in Live Nation’s affiliate program. Commission Junction tracks orders through referral cookies, but these cookies expire after 45 days, allowing for receipt of commissions on customers who purchase tickets up to 45 days after their initial visit to the site.  

No word yet on which Live Nation events will be part of the affiliate program.

The Value of Niche Blogs, A Great Way to Monetize

     BLOG TIPS - Bloggers can, of course, write about any topic on a blog, but it's likely to be more effective if you decide on a specific niche to blog about (and use an quality domain name) . Quite a few experienced bloggers have said that niche blogging is a quicker way to build your online crediblilty and a better way to monetize a blog. When starting a blog to earn money, or turnng an established blog into an income-generating blog, here are several key reasons to focus on a certain niche in order to be blog successful ! -

Gain loyal readers-  When you cover a niche with your blog, it's much easier for readers to follow you regularly.  Readers will visit your blog each time they are looking for more info on the topic and each time you post, if they subscribed to your blog and thru topic searches.  More readers will result in greater online traffic.

Need to be part of a community-  Blogging on a certain niche allows you to be part of a specifc online community.  This way, you can start to network with others who are interested in the sames topic as you are.  This way you can develope a network to share info and learn new information, helping you come up with new data to post

Importance of your credibility-  As your blog covers a particular nicde, over time you will become more credible on the topic and develope a good reputation.  This will open up other opportunities to promote your blog, thru guest posts / authoring on other blogs, writing opportunities in other media, invitations to participation in forums, etc.  All the while, you can promote your blog and grow its' readership. With this credibility, you will attrack sponsors and advertisers that want to promote to your readership.

Ease of new posts - Through focusing on a particular niche with your blog, your knowledge will enable you to write on the topic more easily.  You will have in-depth info on the subject and find that readers contact you with questions, tips, etc that you can share and turn into new blog posts.

Personal fulfillment -  Hopefully (and ideally), the niche you blog about is a topic you enjoy !  This way, not only will you blog better but you will have fun and find it easier to continue blogging !  What can be better than making money through what you love !!!

BlogHer COO Talks Blogging !

     BLOG TIPS- The COO of BlogHer, Elisa Camahort Page, recently talked with eMarketer about blogs, blogging and monetizing blogs. She discussed current revenue generating models; advertising, sponsorship and affiliates as means with which you can generate income.  She comments that "It's a numbers game, " meaning great blog content, blog marketing, blog promotion will get you a bigger audience.  And with a larger audience comes more readers to support your blog thru click thrus or purchases.  BlogHer is well known internet community as a network and guide to blogs by women. BlogHer states their mission "is to create opportunities for women who blog to pursue exposure, education, community and economic empowerment".  Ms Page comments on the current economic climate, it's impact on blogging and how BlogHer continues to see new blogs being created.  Blogging is a great tool for self-expression that so easy to implement she says and notes that money is NOT the biggest motivator for new bloggers.  That's likely a good thing, because the passion to blog needs to be there first.  With that you can continue to grow your blog and monetize as it builds.  Grab that great domain name, and start a blog!

See story at eMarketer and continue to  Blog to Great !