Monetization Blog (part-3)
Chapter 4Generating More Adsense Money
Forum Signature Files
One way to increase traffic to your blog is to post messages on internet
forums. An internet forum is simply a message board where people gather
to talk and form their own online communities. There are forums on just
about any topic you can think of. Seriously, you would be surprised what
topics you can find forums on! You can find forums on anything from
childbirth to finance, from politics to world history, and literally every other
topic in between.
Most online forums allow you to have a personalized signature file. Within
this personal signature file you can generally put a link to your blog, a link to
a website you own or frequent, your name, the city you live in, or any other
basic information you choose to have visible to anyone who reads the forum
messages. When you post a message on the forum, your signature file will
automatically post the information you entered into it, at the bottom of each
of the messages you post. Using a signature on forums can be a great way
to get people to come and read your blog while being able to reach your
target market easily.
What you will want to do first is to sign-up for forums which either relate
directly to your topic, or where people with similar interests to your topic
hang-out online, and then include the link back to your blog in your signature
file. You want to make sure to only post good quality and more important
relevant messages to the topic of the forum. You should aim to become a
valuable participant in the forum. If your messages add value to the forum
for the other community readers, and you get to know some of the other
posters and build an online friendship, then they will likely check-out your
blog and start reading it. When they find that they like your blog they will
also post messages on their favorite forums about it and bring you more
readers. They will begin to advertise your blog for you. What’s better than
some passive advertising? Nothing!
What you do not want to ever do is join a forum and simply post about how
great your blog is and how everyone should check it out. This is considered
spamming and will result in you being banned from most forums, and might
even get your blog itself shut-down. You will not gain any meaningful traffic
from doing this. All you will do is irritate people and possibly get some nice
rude comments added to your blog. People will not check out your blog
because you say it is great.
Finding Forums of Interest
Finding forums which are relevant to the topic of your blog is a very easy
thing to do. Suppose for a moment that you have a blog with a topic of
“trout fishing.” You can simply go to www.google.com, or any other search
engine you prefer to use, and type in “trout fishing +forum” and you get
back 258,000 possible locations to visit for forums relating to trout fishing.
The list which Google returns to you will include some duplicates and some
other junk, but you will also find that there are more trout fishing forums
than you ever imagined!
Because of the way search engines work, you will find that the most popular
forums will show towards the top of the search result pages. Those are
probably the best to join and get to know people in. Because they have a
high search engine ranking tells you that they have a large membership and
a good grasp of the topic of your interest. They are the most likely places
where people who enjoy trout fishing are hanging out online.
As well as searching for “trout fishing,” you might also consider searching for
other topics which would be of interest to other people who trout fish. Some
of these topics might include subjects like backpacking, camping, fishing, fly
fishing, hiking, outdoor life, outdoor recreation, living off the land, etc…
Think about all of the other things you are interested in and think about
whether or not others who trout fish would also be interested in those things.
From there you can come up with relevant words to search and a whole new
batch of forums to introduce yourself on and participate in.
If you think outside the box a bit you can come up with unlimited options of
where to share links to your blog. The more ideas you can come up with
then the more readers you can bring to your blog. The more readers to your
blog then the more potential AdSense clicks and the more money in your
bank account.
E-Mail Signature Files
Most every e-mail client these days offers you the ability to create a
signature file. Even free e-mail accounts, such as Yahoo or Hotmail, allow
you to create a signature file. Exactly the same as on an online message
board or forum, this signature file is attached to each and every message
you send out from your e-mail account. Think of all the people you send email
to each day and all of the possible new blog readers you can gain from
this one simple signature file.
If you attach a link to your blog in every e-mail message you send out people
will invariably click on it whether it has to do with what you e-mailed them
about or not. People are very curious creatures and they want to know
what’s up with other people and what they are thinking. Your blog allows
them into your brain a bit, so they will click on the link to your blog and look
it over.
These e-mail contacts may be potential blog readers who you would not have
reached with online advertising in any other way. Using signature files allows
you to easily reach a large variety of people yet not spend more than the
couple minutes it takes to initially set up the signature file itself. And, if you
have a good quality blog then it is entirely possible these new readers will
pass along your link to all the people they know as well.
If you have multiple blogs and multiple e-mail accounts you can put links to
all of your blogs in the signature files of each e-mail account or your can put
one link per account. Try to think what will generate you the most traffic to
the specific blogs you choose. You should always take the time to promote
your own blogs and your own sites through your other blogs and sites; even
if they are not directly related to each other. Your goal for any blog or
website should always be to have the most visitors possible and you can do
this through promoting your sites wherever you can both online and off.
Back-links Bring Traffic to Your Blog
One of the best ways to bring up your search engine rankings, and bring
traffic to your blog, is by having a lot of back-links. A back-link is a link on
someone else’s website to your blog. There are many ways to get back-links
to your blog, you can write and submit articles to directories and other
websites, you can write and submit a press release online, or you can simply
post comments on other blogs which will then link back to your blog. Other
ways to get back-links is to link all of your blog to one another and to link up
with other blogger’s sites for the mutual benefit of all of you.
Article Submissions
There are many places online where you can submit a short (400-600 word)
non-fiction article about something you know. This article could be your first
blog posting, it could be something you come up with just to post on an
article directory website, or it could be an article you have someone else
ghostwrite and then publish under your own name. This is one time where
having other people write for you probably isn’t a bad thing. As long as the
article is good and sound it really doesn’t matter if it was written by you or a
ghostwriter you hired to write it.
Submitting an article to an online article directory is free, simple, and easy.
Simply turn one of your blog posts into an article which can stand alone, and
then submit it to the article directory of your choice. (Some popular ones are
articlealley.com, contentdesk.com, ezinearticles.com and goarticles.com.)
There are also automated submission programs you can use to submit your
articles to many article sites all at one time.
Attached to your article will be a “byline.” Your byline will contain
information about you and a link to your blogs and other websites. You could
have your byline read something like “Jane Smith is a programmer by day
and blogs on horses at night. See her amazing programming website at
www.iprogram.com and read her blog at www.besthorseblog.com.” This
example byline just created two back-links for every time you publish the
article; one to the programming site and another to the horse blog. If you
post this article five times on the web you have ten back-links to your sites.
Also, many article sites allow you to publish non-exclusive rights articles on
their sites. This means that you are free to post the same article on other
article sites as well. Each time you submit the article you build links to your
site. In addition, other bloggers and webmasters will link to these articles on
their own relevant sites and that creates even more links for your site as
well. By submitting articles to article directory websites you can build links
easily to your site to increase your search engine rankings.
Press Release Submissions
If you were to start a small home business, one way to receive free
advertising for it would be to send a press release to your local newspapers.
Online there are a few press release websites where you can submit a free
press release about your new blog or website. (The two most popular are
prweb.com and prfree.com.)
To make a press release, simply write up a short statement about how
awesome your newly launched site is and post it on the free press release
websites. Make sure to have a link to your site in your press release and you
have just created one additional back-link for each site you submitted your
press release to. Press releases are a great way to get links without a lot of
work. They can be short and to the point.
Blog Directory Submissions
Just as there are directories online for e-mail address, phone numbers, and
other information, there are also directories which contain blog listings.
These blog directories are websites where people can go to find a whole list
of blogs on any specific topic of interest to them. The search this directory,
just like a search engine, and the results page is one of blogs which are on
their topic.
Submitting your blogs to directories will help you to get both back-links and
more readers to your blog. Both results will help with your search engine
rankings as well as your AdSense ad revenue.
Comment on Other Blogs
Another way to create back-links to your blog is to post comments onto other
people’s blogs and websites. If you leave quality comments then people just
might want to find out what else you have to say on your own blog. If you
leave comments on another Blogger blog, then your account will show up
and your comments with automatically link back to your own blog. Readers
of the blog will read your comments and click on your link to see what your
blog is all about.
Some people will post a short message about enjoying a blog and then ask
the blogger to check out their own blog and include the link to their own
website. By simply leaving a spam message of “hey check out my blog” you
will likely irritate people and not gain readers. Leave quality information and
people are much more likely to check out your blog. You always want to
make sure you are adding value to the web, not just out advertising your
own blog to make money.
Team Up With Other Bloggers
Teaming up with other bloggers can be a great way to get links to your blog.
You can have a one-way back-link to your website, or you can have
reciprocal links. A reciprocal like is where you link to someone’s site and
they link back to yours in exchange. Search engines prefer back-links over
reciprocal links, but any link is better than none. And, the more links to your
blog, ultimately the better.
Many bloggers have formed what is called a “blogroll.” A blogroll is a list of
links to other blogs with similar topics of interest. This allows blogs to have
back-links to them and also allows you to advertise your blog to the readers
of all of the similar blogs. Blogrolls can be a great way to get new readers to
your blog and to raise your search engine rankings at the same time.
Another thing bloggers will often do is trade posting message with another
blogger. This trade of message posts is called “guest blogging.” Suppose for
a moment that I have a successful blog on work at home opportunities.
Another blogger who I found online has a blog on stay at home parents. We
could trade posts where I would allow her guest post on my blog about stay
at home parents in exchange for my guest posting about work at home
opportunities on her blog. We swap “guest” posts and each includes a byline
with a link back to our own blog or website. I have a back-link and she has
one as well.
By teaming up with other bloggers and guest blogging in this way you can
have access to the loyal readers of another blog and they will have access to
your blog. Because, in the example above, our blogs do not directly compete
with each other for readers, we can be an added service to each other and to
our respective readers. We can both build up our readership and also create
some links to our site at the same time. This is a win-win situation for
everyone involved in it.
Finding other bloggers to guest blog with is not difficult. If you take the time
to develop a good blog, with quality content, then other bloggers with good
quality blogs will want to exchange links and posts with you. The better your
blog, the better guest opportunities you will have!
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