If You Don't Ask You Don't (Always) Get

Years ago I managed a sales team and one of the slogans we had was 'If you don't tell you don't sell' which is similar to life in general when we could say, 'If you don't ask you don't get'.

And this, of course, also applies to blogging!

So when you've written, what you think is a stonking good post, why not ask other bloggers to link to it by puting a footnote at the end of the post. Better still give them the link to copy. It's always best to make life easy for people - we can all be a lazy lot.

So you could maybe have a box something like this:

If you liked what you read please link to us:

<a href="http://mikesmoneymakingmission.blogspot.com">Mikes Money Making Mission</a>

On Blogger posts, and most places, you can't just print the link into your post for people to copy, but you can use a form instead.

The HTML isn't too difficult for such a form and I've given an example of this below, which created the box I used above.

This can easily be adapted for your own use by:

(1) Entering your URL (of your blog or post) instead of where mine is and
(2) Entering the name of your blog or post where Mikes Money Making Mission is entered.

Other things you can also alter are:
(a) rows="4". You can have any amount of rows (going downwards) to suit what you are including within the box and the same goes for
(b) cols="46". This is the width you want your box. I use 46 because this fits about right for the width of this blog's posts.

<form action="#" method="post" wrap="virtual"><textarea name="link" rows="4" cols="46"><a href="http://mikesmoneymakingmission">Mikes Money Making Mission</a>

At the end of the script in the above box also add: /textarea and /form each enclosed with<>

My apologies to all of you HTML experts for my basic explanation but I hope this will be of use to newbies.

But the real point of the post is : Ask and see if this brings more links to your blog or an individual post.

Good luck,
Mike.

Money Making: Quite Easily Done

I was asked if I would do anything different if I was just about to start my very first money making blog.

I think the main two things I would have done, the very first day, are:

(1) I would have got myself a .com URL instead of sticking with the .blogspot address.

One of the reasons I didn't do this, at the time, was because I wanted to see if I could make money from blogging without spending any myself. In other words I wanted to make money from nothing. It was a self imposed challenge.

Now that I have proved to my own satisfaction that this can be done I wish I had spent about $10 and got myself a .com. It definitely sounds and looks more professional.

Personally I'm quite happy with my blogs being hosted on Blogger and, as you may well know, there are options to purchase a .com and still host the blog on Blogger.

(2) The second thing I would have done straight away is to get myself another template and not stick to Blogger's standard layouts.

There are lots of places where you can get alternative templates for free, such as at FinalSense for example.

This won't give you an 'exclusive' template but they have lots to choose from. Make sure, if it is for Blogger, that it is an XML design so that it is compatible with the up to date version of Blogger.

Switching to a new template is very easy to do, though you will most likely have to update the side columns all over again.

Also it's useful learning a bit of basic HTML so that you can tweak your template if necessary.

Following these two things it's back to that old chestnut of publishing good content - that people want to read. Yes, I know I keep saying this but you can have the flashiest template, an interesting .com address but without quality content the blog won't make money. It's substance that matters.

I can illustrate this by saying that my biggest earning blog still uses a .blogspot URL. Though it's content that is important (1) and (2) above might just have given me an extra edge that would have made the blog more acceptable to mainstream websites.

I guess to sum up: make the blog look as good as you can, have a suitable .com and publish content of value.

Q.E.D. (quod erat demonstrandum - or some say Quite Easily Done).

Good luck,
Mike

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Grade Your Money Making With The Website Grader

If you are one of those who likes analysing your website there is a free tool that may be of interest. It's called the Website Grader.

It's easy to use, just enter your URL and within a few minutes a report will come tumbling out - well it'll be on the screen anyway. I found out that you can use the tool without actually entering your email address - this appears optional.

You get lots of info including a grade out of 100. The blog I checked gave me 90 out of 100 which meant the blog scores higher than 90% of the thousands of websites evaluated. Their algorithm supposedly works on 50+ variables including search engine date, website structure, approximate traffic and so on.

After this it checks many things and gives you the info they found. For instance on the blog I entered it reported that I hadn't completed the metadata i.e. page description and meta keywords. This is something I should correct. There is a link for more info on metadata.

It also looks at the main directories to see if the website/blog is on the likes of DMOZ, Yahoo! Directory and ZoomInfo.

Other things covered include: Images, Last Google Crawl Date, Traffic Rank, Inbound Links, Google Indexed Pages, Posts Dugg, del.icio.us bookmarks and there is also a Keyword Grader and lots more besides.

As I've written before I think sometimes it's possible to get too deep into stats and the like but there may be something on the Website Grader that could be beneficial - if you've got a spare 5-10 minutes that is.

Good luck,
Mike.

P.S. John has informed me that he has another Proven Earners Carnival up and running.

Synonyms For Higher Rankings

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ReviewStream For A Small Money Stream

As there are all sorts of people who arrive at this blog, with different money making needs, here is something that'll earn you a little money, but not massive amounts.

I heard about this program from John at Web-Dosh. I must admit I hadn't come across it before this.

The website is ReviewStream.

It's all about writing reviews. Nothing new there you might say, but they can be about almost anything, you'll see the list of subjects on their website.

As far as I can see the reviews don't have to be very long, so you could probably knock out a few quite quickly. Here's an example of one I wrote in a few minutes: Heathrow: Terminal 5.

Okay, the nitty gritty. You don't get a lot for writing them. At the moment it's just $2 per review plus 10c for every 'vote' you receive.

This doesn't sound a lot but what if you wrote say three a day for five days a week that would be $120 a month, $1440 a year. Which is probably more than a lot of people are making from new blogs.

The reviews have to be approved and this take about 72 hours.

As for payment, this is made via PayPal once you have over $50. Note that you have to request the payment, it's not made automatically.

And that's it, other than there is a 1% commission for referring new members - this is as a percentage of the amount that they make. Again not a lot but every little helps.

I don't think I'll do a lot with them myself, though I will try to get to the $50 payout figure to test that it all works okay.

ReviewStream: It depends on what sort of income you are aiming for. Perhaps it could be a useful revenue source while building a new blog.

Good luck,
Mike.

Free Adult Website. Make big money with a free adult products website. Over 18's only.

Be Careful Of The Search Engine Censors

Be careful as to what readers' write in your comments.

This is my reason for saying this.

As I've written previously I like to experiment with different blogs and try various things out. In doing so, a while back, I started a basic blog about a British television presenter Konnie Huq.

It never really took off as she wasn't in the news very much. The blog averaged only about 125 visitors a day. These mostly arrived from the Google search engine as the blog was always on the front page for keywords "Konnie Huq" and various other combinations.

Everything ticked over okay and I only updated the posts once in a while.

Then 10 days ago the blog had over 4000 visitors in 24 hours.

"Great," you might think but a strange thing happened. The blog no longer appeared on the Google search engine's first page, or the second, or the third. In fact I couldn't find it on the search engine.

To my own satisfaction I believe I have discovered as to why this was. These 4000+ visitors left over 80 comments and most of them were from China.

They were upset because Konnie Huq was chosen to carry the Olympic torch in London but spoke out about 'human rights' in China and the Tibet issue.

Most of the Chinese were furious at what she had said and the comments they left were racist, threatening and generally awful.

And I believe this is why the blog was no longer on the Google search first page.

I left the comments initially thinking that these said more about the writers than anything I could have said myself. And I don't really believe in censorship (within certain parameters).

However, seeing my problem with Google I eventually removed the offending comments.

Guess what?

The blog is now back on the Google first page in 8th position!

Okay it was previously higher but the removal of the comments did the trick. And that's why I said, at the beginning of this post, to be careful as to what is written within comments on your blog. There are forms of censorship and control all around us!

Good luck,
Mike.

Be Trendy And Make More Money

I've talked about trends previously and how they can be an aid to getting more visitors to your blog.

I've maintained that by getting in at the beginning of a trend, which is relative to your niche, can bring more traffic. In other words if we look for something new, and on the way up, as opposed to churning out what everyone else does, the effort pays off. And more traffic = more money.

I read a while back that a very well known and successful blogger had the opinion that trends, such as Google Trends, weren't really that useful. His thinking was that the subjects listed had already peaked and you were therefore too late. You'd missed the boat.

My experience is somewhat different.

There is no hard and set rule but I have found that by following a trend there is often an influx of visitors perhaps one, two or three days later. Sometimes the world in general takes a while to catch up.

This doesn't work all the time, the Internet is a fickle place, but I'd suggest experimenting with trends and seeing how it pans out for your particular niche. It may well pay dividends.

Good luck,
Mike.

P.S. Paris Hilton earns £11,200 ($22,400) Visiting Toilet.

P.P.S. John has told me he has published his latest Proven Earners Carnival. Go take a peak.

A New Amazon Widget

Amazon have a spanking brand new widget, which you can see on the left. It can contain up to 10 product selections. In the example I have chosen books on blogging.

This is how Amazon describe this new 'Carousel' widget:

"The Carousel widget presents products in an interactive 3D display allowing you to select either the Carousel or Ferris Wheel format in multiple sizes that work for your site.

There are several ways to create your widget; you can hand pick specific products to recommend to your viewers or choose to display the latest Bestsellers and New Releases from any Amazon category."

Of course, as with all widgets and advertising ideas, the real question is: Will it produce more sales?

To be honest I don't know, but I'll give it a run as it's better than some of their other advertising options.

How attractive or different it looks doesn't really matter, it's sales that count.

As you may have read in my posts I've a theory that good text ads, relavant to a post's subject matter, work far better than most banners or widgets.

It's all about appealing to what readers want and their interests. Match them up and sales will follow.

And that is why I've included Darren Rowse's book Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six Figure Income in my Carousel!

Good luck,
Mike.

Money Making? It's All An Illusion

Count The Black Dots
It's all an illusion.

Life, happiness, blogging and so on. Everything is as we think it is, so there isn't actually any reality.

What's this all got to do with making money?

Well if we publish a blog we create an impression on readers and it's up to us to cultivate that impression so that it is in our favour.

Very few readers actually really know you or I. All they have is an idea as to what we are like and they can only judge this by what we write, maybe photos and the layout of our blogs.

I guess what we have to do is to step back occasionally and look at our blogs and ask ourselves what sort of impression we are creating. Good? Bad? Indifferent? A winner? A loser? Knowledgeable? Ignorant?

It's actually quite important.

If the blog is a mess, the spelling all over the place and so on are readers going to believe what we say? Probably not of we can't even do the basics.

Unfortunately a lot of success is based on appearance and how people see us in their mind's eye.

As an example when I published my magazines I did most of the work, other than the printing, myself. But I never gave this impression. My home was my business but the address became 'Xxxxxx House' instead of just a road number and I always tried to write and sound positive.

I used to get quite a few phone calls so my wife would answer the phone, with the name of my business, and then 'transfer' the call to me. It looked like I had staff!

We used to laugh about it. I remember one guy asking my wife if Mike Perry was in the building on that particular day. She said she would check!

And that is how life is.

It's not who or what we are. It's what people think we are that matters.

Does all of this matter?

Not completely, but in business it can give us an edge or slight advantage.

Something to ponder when you have time.

Good luck,
Mike.

P.S. John has told me that he's done another edition of his Proven Earners Carnival. If you also go to his home page you'll find lots of links to articles / posts on other Carnivals.

Sell And Promote What You Believe In To Make Money

I remember Anita Roddick saying at the height of her Bodyshop success:

"People ask me if I only use my own products. Of course - how could I sell skin and hair products that I do not use myself? It would be completely dishonest."

Now even Anita cannot have used every one of her products but at least she had the right basic principles. Sell what you really believe in and you'll be successful - or at least have a good chance of being so.

And I feel that this also should apply to money making from blogs and on the Internet generally.

I get fed up seeing all of these send me $49, $99, or whatever amount, and I'll show you how to make thousands before breakfast / in 2 hours a day etc.

They annoy me because most of the people promoting the stuff haven't actually done it themselves. They are just agents or affiliates getting their percentage - a lot don't even know the actual details of what they are actually selling. This can't be ethical or even honest.

As I've already indicated we have to surely at least have faith in whatever it is we promote.

Okay, on my celeb blogs I promote things like FriendFinder, AdultFriendFinder, Sexy Ads Penthouse and DIY Dating and I'm not a member of any of them myself - other than as an affiliate. I'm a happily married man - well my wife tells me I am! But I have made sure that they are all genuine and honest. Plus people can initially join for free to see that it all works to their satisfaction, before paying any money.

I just feel that as bloggers we have to try and be as honest as we can - reputation is everything in business.

Going back to those 'send me $xx for info on how to make $xxxxx'. The fact is that most of the money is made by selling the manual, ebook or whatever. How-to information is big business and extremely profitable, but it should be honest and something of value - as should the affiliates selling it. If they don't know how it works they should sell it.

Must have got out of bed the wrong side today - probably because my wife has had to go to Germany for a week. Now what was that web address for ... only joking!

Sell and promote what you believe in to make money.

Good luck,
Mike

Regular New Blood Is Needed To Make Money

I've said before about how there is a lot of regurgitation on the subject of how to make money with blogs. I like at times to question the blogging status quo.

For instance: are subscribers all they are cracked up to be when it comes to making money?

Everyone tells us that a blog needs subscribers. No doubt you have a few hundred, as I have, but do they actually earn you any money?

Now I'm not for one minute saying that we shouldn't try to gain subscribers. It's good to see familiar faces and I appreciate my regular visitors. But I ask again: is this where the money is actually made?

I don't think so.

A subscriber will arrive to read your latest post because he or she likes what you write about. Great. But isn't that most likely all they will do? Will they, for instance, click on your ads or anything else you may be promoting?

I feel there is less chance of them doing so than say new blood who are visiting the blog for the first time or only pop in occasionally. These are the readers who are most likely to do more than simply read the post and then move on. The odds are that they will stay on the blog for longer.

My assumption is therefore that an important task is to search for new blood and new visitors as this is where our 'real' money will be made.

It will always be a necessary continuous challenge to attract regular new readers.

I have already said that we should encourage subscribers but there needs to be a balance of regular and new visitors.

Subscribers have a value in that they probably trust you and a relationship is formed. They may therefore be more persuaded by your recommendations. So if something is promoted properly, within a post, then this can make money. They are also more likely to link to your posts (and so help to attract new visitors). Plus there are other benefits to having a solid subscriber base.

I guess what I'm saying is that with a money making blog it's no good just building a large subscriber base and then sitting back. It will always be important to find different ways of attracting new blood.

As with Dracula new blood is needed to keep a blog alive.

Just a thought!

Good luck,
Mike.


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Top Five Blog Referrers - Thank you!

Another month. Just think: the first quarter of 2008 is already over. Hope you did okay and achieved your targets or objectives.

My thanks to the blogs that have sent me referrals.

These are my Top Five Blog Referrers.

A new number one with John's WebDosh. John also has a new blog Blog To Earn - Proven Earners Carnival. It features articles by proven money earners.

And I have a new entry into fifth position for April. May Leng's Just Me. This is a personal blog with posts such as, erm, Pee Like A Man. Not much more I can say about that! Here's the Top Five:
1.
WebDosh
2.
Make Money Fa$t
3.
Money Money Money
4.
Active Duty Military Money and Matters
5.
Just Me
Thanks also to everyone who sent me referrals. It's appreciated very much. And I suppose thanks also to Google for the search engine and image referrals. They were by far the biggest referrer for MMMM.

Main Keywords for March were: (1) money making blog, (2) moneymaking, (3) Voxant, (4)Jason Steele Forex and (5) money making.

I see that an old favourite, from when I started blogging, myLot will pay me $10+ during early April. It's something I'd virtually forgotten. It's hardly a big earner but when I started this blog it proved useful for getting traffic and contacts. The $10 is from referrals I made in the past.

I had some time out during March to go sun seeking but all in all it's been an okay month.

Good luck for April.
Mike.