The Back Catalogue Brings May Visitors

Yet another month has ticked by and I've been looking at different aspects of my blogs for May.

I have written before about what I call the back catalogue of posts and their value. I think that last month illustrated this when I looked at the most viewed posts on various blogs.

If we take this blog, for example, out of the five top most viewed posts only one was from May and three of the others were from 2007.

It's also interesting how two of the posts started with the words How To. These are two powerful words when someone is looking for information on search engines. Here are the Top Five:

How To Make Money With Chain Letters March 2007
Lots Of Ways On How To Make Money May 2007
Money Making With Free Blogs - Part 1 March 2007
How To get 90% Discounts On Amazon Products May 2008
List Of 40 Blog Directories Offering Free Listings Feb 2008

With my celebrity blog again three of the top five most viewed posts are from last year. Because I get more traffic to the blog the value of older posts can be seen even more.

Just these three 2007 posts brought in 4460 readers, about 148 per day, during May. This is why I have said in the past that, in my opinion, a new blog should write as many (quality) posts as possible and on varied subjects relevant to their niche.

Top Five for Celebrity Insider - Photos & News were:

Paulette Dean Daly: Relationship With Roger Clemens May 2008
The Noelia Sex Video June 2007
Exclusive - Was Sarah Larson A Go Go Dancer? Sept 2007
Marcia Cross Nude And Desperate Dec 2007
Ani Lorak Ukraine's Favourite To Win Eurovision May 2008

It can be seen from the celeb blog that sex is a big influence in attacting traffic but I guess we all know this! Some of the posts aren't very long but it's really a case of giving people what they want. Sorry, I know I keep repeating this.

Most visitors, on the two mentioned blogs, went to the home page but without the back catalogue there would have been considerably fewer hits.

I'll just mention one more thing about May - my thanks to the other blogs which sent traffic to Mikes Money Making Mission. As usual it's appreciated. The Top Five for May were:

WebDosh
Money Money Money
Blog About Your Blog
Make Money Fa$t
AdSense4Dummies
Thanks to all!

Good luck for June everyone.
Mike.

P.S. John of WebDosh has just told me his Proven Earners Carnival has just been published.

Anchor Text For Improved Search Engine Positions

We all keep reading, and no doubt saying as well, about the value of links into our blogs. Very few will argue about this. It brings in traffic and helps with PageRank and search engine rankings.

What we sometimes overlook though, is the value of the anchor text. By this I mean the words that we choose for our inward bound links. Often we simply use the name of our blog as the link.

We should, however, probably be giving this anchor text as much thought as we do our keywords. Using the right words can help with our SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).

This was brought home to me again by something that Michael Small of seo partner said.

He gave the example of searching for the words click here on Google. If you do the Adobe Acrobat Reader website will be at the top of the page. Now the strange thing is Abode doesn't have the words click here on it's website!

We are usually told that we need chosen keywords on our blogs to get a decent Google ranking, but this isn't 100% necessarily so. Another way is to have lots of inward links where the anchor text is your keyword(s).

Going back to Adobe, they are the top match for click here because of the thousands of other websites that use click here when linking to Adobe's free download of Acrobat Reader.

This anchor test is something to consider when getting inward links or exchanging links. I know that I sometimes forget and, when I refer to other blogs that I publish, I tell readers to click here to visit them. I should instead be using chosen keywords.

It's something that's simple to do and could help our blogs in several ways - so think: anchor text!

Good luck,
Mike.

The Long Tail Way To Make Money

Okay, how's your long tail?

I mean if you have, say a money making blog, do you concentrate on the word money as a keyword? If you do you'll have a heck of a lot of competition and might have a job getting a good position on the Google search engine.

Also, if you use a word like money, it can mean different things to different people. In other words someone who puts money into a search might not be thinking about money making. If he or she isn't then they'll probably leave your blog as quickly as they arrived. It might be a referral for the stats but it won't make you any money.

A Long Tail, in a keyword sense, is more than one word. It could be several words, or a phrase, that really defines what your post (or blog) is all about. Therefore, if a searcher uses your Long Tail words, when they arrive via Google it's more likely they will remain longer on your blog - as you should have something they are really looking for. So this time they are a referral that is more likely to make you money.

So how do you decide what Long Tail words to use?

One way is to use a tool (yes, it's free!) such as the Keyword Suggestion Tool.

This tool will give you up to 100 suggestions and these are based on what people have been searching for.

Let's give an example.

So you've written a post all about, let's say, Harry Potter. So what Long Tail keywords should you use? Here's what this particular Keyword Suggestion Tool came up with:


The full list includes 100 suggestions but I thought that would take up a bit too much space! Anyway, the above list shows what people are presently searching for.

Yes, the two words Harry Potter are at the top but are you realistically going to get a top ten search engine position with these? Doubtful. But you might just fare a lot better with some of the other suggestions on the list.

Whatever Long Tail set of words you choose, of course, has to be incorporated within your post and even in the title if possible.

I used Long Tail keywords long before I'd ever heard of the expression. It simply made sense to me and I've proved to my own satisfaction that they work.

You could even get ideas for posts based on a selection of Long Tail keywords. Enter the theme (i.e. dogs, football, soccer, baby, art or whatever) of your blog into the Keyword Suggestion Tool and see what it comes up with.

If we take the theme or niche 'dogs' the tool suggests: dog breeds, westminster dog show, dog names, dog parvo symptoms, dog food coupons, dog rescue shelters and so on. So amongst the top 100 there should be an idea of something on which to base a post.

The idea is to try and match the searcher with what he or she is looking for. Do this and you have a proper targeted referral - that has a better chance of making money.

I know I've often said that Lots of Traffic = Lots of Money but ...
... Lots of Targeted Traffic = Lots More Money!

Give the Keyword Suggestion Tool a try, there are also others about and they could help:

(1) Bring more targeted referrals
(2) Get a better position on the search engines
(3) Give ideas on which to base a post relative to your niche.
(4) Make you more money! Providing you have the right ads, programs etc. to tie in with the keywords.

Good luck,
Mike.

Do You Do It Every Day?

It's back to basics today and a trip into the past.

I was asked how I managed to get traffic when I first started blogging - starting from nothing and without any blogging contacts.

Funnily enough I couldn't quite remember, other than I had the principle that every day I would do something different to try and get visitors. It was really my constant try, try and try philosphy that eventually got things moving.

I left this blog's URL/address wherever I could.

Often, it has to be said, this wasn't always productive but like water drip, dripping away it does have an overall effect. Plus, by searching for ways to get traffic, you come across all sorts of ideas - again some that work and some that don't. The point is: seek and you will find - that almost sounds religious!

So every day I plugged away doing something.

I hit the blog directories. There is a list of directories, together with their PageRank, on my February post A List Of 40 Free Blog Directories.

Looking back through old records the following two directories sent me the most referrals, though don't expect a deluge!
Blog Show Off
Blog Hub

I also got a good response from Klik Us - mainly because I got onto the front page. When I checked just now I'm still there and I haven't been on the site for ages.

I also joined various forums. These can bring traffic if used properly. One tip is to always comment on your own threads after anyone else makes a comment - this usually will bounce you up to the top of the list threads again.

Then there are things such as MyBlogLog - see widget in right hand column and myLot. Again, when I was starting out they brought me referrals plus with myLot I also earned about $40.

Like a lot of new bloggers I also dabbled with the Traffic Exchange programs. Now these definitely do work if you have the time. I'm not convinced, however, as to the value of the referrals but they can make your stats look good! Three I joined were:
Blog Explosion
Blog Soldiers
Blog Mad

One warning about Traffic Exchanges: Google AdSense do not like them so don't run AdSense ads while using any form of traffic exchange.

I won't go through everything that I tried when I started blogging - I see I haven't mentioned the likes of exchanging links, commenting on other blogs, social networking for example - but the message is:

Do something new every day to try and generate traffic. Readers won't otherwise magically appear - remember there are 50 million other blogs out there!

Good luck,
Mike.

YouGov: Complete surveys and polls for payment - genuine company.

Make Money With Your Blog's Comments

When trying to make money from blogs it's as well to use all sorts of things that are available. Such as having an ad or ads on your comments form or page.

On Blogger this is very simple. Go to Settings and then Comments and on this page you'll find a box to complete headed Comment Form Message.


In the box just enter your ad and this will then be seen when visitors look at your Comments Page/Form (together with the relevant link, of course). Basic HTML is accepted.

Since I have started doing this myself I have stopped using the pop up window for comments as any clicks on links only go to a small sized page i.e. same size as the pop up window. I figure that this may put off readers. So I'm back to using the standard full page.

Having an ad on the comments page isn't going to make a bundle of money but every few extra clicks helps - especially if you have several blogs on the go.

Good luck,
Mike

P.S. I believe there was a problem with my last post How To Get 90% Discounts On Amazon Products when viewing on Firefox. Hopefully the adjustments I have made have now corrected this. Fingers crossed! Thanks Tom and Zania for telling me about this.

How To Get 90% Discount On Amazon Products

I suppose this post isn't exactly about making money with blogs, though it could be. It's about getting big discounts from Amazon - even as much as 90%!

I say it could be a money maker for bloggers because what you buy cheap you can often resell for profit, which is a basic requirement for many businesses.

There are a few pictures on this post of 'bargains' (taken at random) that could perhaps be resold, from both Amazon USA and Amazon UK.

The Krug Baumen watch, for example, is down from £374.26 to £29.95, quite a saving! Offers shown are current at time of posting.

Okay, so how do you find out these heavily discounted Amazon items? There's nothing too difficult in it, it's simply a matter of using the right search format.

The following URL is all that is required, though it has to be adapted by altering the red, green and orange sections.

www.amazon.co.uk/gp/search/?
node=328228011&pct-off=90-99

First the red section.
This obviously needs to be altered dependent on what country Amazon you want to search. USA would be altered to .com and so on. That's straightforward.

Now the green section.
This node code number has to be altered for the sort of items you are looking for. I've listed a lot of the codes below both for both UK and USA.

USA Codes:
283155 =Books
5174 =Music
502394 =Camera & Photo
1065836 =Audio & Television
541966 =Computers & PC Hardware
229534 =Software
172282 =All Electronics
361395011 =Home Appliances
1057794 =Furniture & Decor
16310101 =Grocery
165793011 =Toys & Games
3367581 =Jewelry
377110011 =Watches
3760911 =Beauty
3403201 =Cycling
3375251 =Sports & Outside

UK Codes
266239 =Books
229816 =Music
283926 =DVD
300703 =PC & Video Games
560834 =Camera & Photo
560858 =Audio & Television
560884 =iPod & MP3
561904 =Computing & Office
300435 =Software
11052591 =Home & garden
468292 =Toys and Games
328228011 =Jewellery & Watches
355005011 =Shoes
362353011 =Bags and Accesories
318949011 =Sports and Leisure
65801031 =Health & Beauty

Simply substitute the code required for whatever type of products you are looking for discounts on.

Thirdly the orange section.
The 90-99 shown, in the example, refers to us looking for discounts of between 90% and 99%.

I must point out that there are not always discounts of between 90% and 99%, on all categories. With some products it might be less.

Discounts are continually altering, dependent on lots of factors, so several searches may be needed. If there is nothing in the 90-99 range try altering the discount to, say 75-99, or whatever you think might be acceptable.

Some products are more likely to have bigger discounts than others.

It's really a matter of playing around with products and discounts until you spot what you consider to be a bargain price, either for your own use or to sell on for profit.

Here are a few examples to test and see what's currently available.

USA
Watches & Jewelry
Electronics

UK
Cameras & Photos
Watches

And that is how to get big discounts on Amazon products. It's worth messing around with as you never know what you might turn up on any particular day.

Good luck,
Mike.


Link to this post

<a href="http://mikesmoneymakingmission.blogspot.com/2008/05/how-to-get-90-discount-on-amazon.html">How To Get 90% Discounts On Amazon Products</a>

Blogging To The Bank: Create highly profitable blogs that suck in thousands of target visitors every day.

Amazon Widget Brings Music To Your Blog

Amazon have introduced yet another widget for affiliates. This allows you to play song samples from Amazon's catalogue of over five million entries.

You can choose the songs you want or alternatively display the latest bestsellers - as I have done in the sample below.

It's only a small money maker as a download is normally only about 99c - and the commission is at 10%. Of course, once on the Amazon site, the reader may be tempted to order something else of a higher value.

I must admit though that I've never really managed to get a good return from Amazon. I was just looking at some stats and my last 250 clicks only produced one order. So we are talking of only a 0.4% take up. Not exactly amounts to set you on fire - but a few small income streams help to make something bigger.

Okay now click the widget and see what you want to download! Let's see 10% off 99c is ... good job there are a few far superior affiliate programs about.


Good luck,
Mike.

P.S. John has emailed me to say that he had done his regular Proven Earners Carnival. You can see this here.

Make Money Giving Away Free Magazine Subscriptions

This is a money making program I have only just joined. You may have heard of it before, it's called RevResponse.

So what's it all about?
You simply give away free magazine subscriptions, podcasts and white papers relevant to your particular blog or website niche. To help you to do this, along with ads and widgets, you also get a free co-branded site.

Here's my site as an example. It's possible to fiddle and adjust things but I've left mine, so far, exactly as provided.

If you want the official details, this is how RevResponse describes it:

"With NetLine’s RevResponse, you’re in the position to give your audience valuable content completely free of charge AND get paid for doing so. As you know all too well, this is practically unheard of. Your users see the value and sign up for the free content, and we pay you a commission on every qualified subscription or download request - including requests from your international audience. Find another network that pays you to give away professional content and resources."

What can you earn?
Money is paid on free subscriptions again, to quote RevResponse: 'We'll guarantee you a $1.50 minimum on every qualified subscription/request.' It could be more. Typical payments I read are $2 to $20.

There is also money to be made by referring others into the program. For referrals you make 20% of what the people you introduce earn for the first six months of them joining.

Payments are made to affiliates either by check or PayPal.

What sort of publications are on offer?
There are about 600 different offers including business and trade magazines, podcasts and white papers. A couple of better known mags I spotted were eWeek, The Economist and BusinessWeek.

There are about 30 categories of free offers including: IT, Internet, Sales & Marketing, Small and Medium Business, Information Technology, Computers, Finance, Multimedia Network / Communications and so on.

Promotional stuff?
Here's a typical text ad:

Download Hundreds of Complimentary Small & Medium Business Resources
Get hundreds of popular Small & Medium Business magazines, white papers, webinars, podcasts, and more; all available at no cost to you. With more than 600 complimentary offers, you'll find plenty of titles to suit your professional interests and needs. Click Here and Sign up today!

There are also widgets in several sizes, as per top right of this post, plus adverts. You choose the category of content.

Will it make money?
I've got to be honest. I don't know because, as I have already said, I have only just joined. There does seem to be potential - everyone wants something for free - and if you can see magazines etc. that are relevant to your niche then perhaps it could prove profitable.

Got to be worth a look!

Good luck,
Mike.

Money Making Silly Cats

More cat pictures

Okay, so your blogging isn't exactly making you bucket loads of money but this doesn't mean that it can't be done. It probably just means you haven't, as yet, hit upon the right niche or idea.

Let's look at a blog that is successful I Can Has Cheeseburger. Yes a silly name name and it's also a silly blog full of silly photos of cats with silly captions (often wrongly spelt as above).

But mock not as it's pulling in about $6000 a month plus it's only been running since January last year - and to think that the experts say it takes years of sweat and toil to make money blogging. Not true. All you need is the right subject matter and to be a bit different.

I read about the guy who started the blog on BusinessWeek.

It all started when he posted a single photo of a fat, smiling cat with the caption 'I can has cheeseburger.'

It sort of caught on and he continued with similar cat photos with equally silly captions. Traffic streamed to the blog. Starting with nil in January, it was up to 375,000 for March and 750,000 for April and 1,5 million for May 07.

The bloke who started it was Eric Nakagawa from Hawaii and he runs it with his partner, who only wants to be known as Tofuburger (nope, no idea why!). Eric quit his job to develop the blog further.

Though the subject matter for the blog was a bit of a fluke they continually tweak the site to see what draws readers and what doesn't.

According to the BusinessNews article they post when they believe most people are likely to read their stuff: in the mornings, at lunch times and in the evening. They have also created a widget to rate the posts (1 to 5 cheesburgers) - and this boosted traffic by 2000.

I think this emphasises that money making from blogging is very viable. In the example given, it was a case of being different and finding the right niche / subject matter and then experimenting to get things right. The blog also gets readers involved with rating pics, sending in their photos and so on.

Yep, there's money in blogging.

Good luck,
Mike.

How To Make Money Doing Nothing

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Use Link Bait, Set The Trap, Count The Money

Strewth! I was looking at a couple of SEO websites and saw that one of them offers to create a Link Bait campaign for other sites. Seems a good idea, but then I noticed the price - $9,950. And there are no refunds!

It shows the money making potential if you have the guts to ask for it - and have a knowledge of the subject, of course.

Putting this aside Link Baiting is something that we should all try - though sometimes we do this without actually realising that this is what we are doing.

To put it as simply as possible Link Bait is creating a post that others will want to visit again and/or will want to share the post with others. In other words it's a post that will attract a lot of links.

The post may be just text or perhaps a video, a web tool or an image. What it has to do is create a lot of interest and so create a viral effect bringing you lots of incoming links. It's about creating a buzz.

There are a myriad ways of doing this. The standard advice is to do this is by:

Being Newsworthy: Release or create an important piece of news or something that your specific niche will be desperate to read - probably something they haven't heard about before. Become a ground breaker.

Being Funny: Humour (or humor to those in the USA) is what makes the Internet go round - a funny cartoon, picture, video or story.

Being Controversial: Yes, upset a few people, take an opposing viewpoint from the norm, go into a rage or rant and, before you know what has happened, the subject is being talked about on other sites and forums (with those important links to what you have written).

Being Resourceful: Simply tell others where to get specific things relative to your niche. A nice long list should bring links in return. Or provide any other resource or reference.

There are lots and lots more ways if you put your mind to the subject.

Once the Bait has been laid do everything possible to promote your post - and know how you are going to go about this prior to publishing. It's no good laying bait without a trap.

Think: Social Networking, Blog Comments, Help From Blogging Friends, Keywords - make the post Keyword Rich (include the Keyword(s) within the title), Relevant Outward Links within the post (this may encourage a return link), Forums and so on.

As with most things in successful Blogging, Link Baiting takes effort and planning but the dividends can be amazing.

Link Bait = Inward Links = More Visitors = More Money (Income)

Good luck,
Mike.

Images Make Me Money

I know I have written about the Power of Images before but, just to emphasise the point, on one of my celebrity blogs I have now had over a quarter of a million Google Image referrals in the 336 days since I started this particular blog. And, of course, this was starting from blank.

As you will see from the stats on the left Google Images have now overtaken the standard Google as my top search engine referrals.

The stats also show the power of Google when compared to the other search engines. Though Yahoo, for example, pulls in about 20 hits a day this is a very small percentage when compared to Google's combined totals.

The other thing that this stresses, of course, is how reliant the blog is on Google for search engine referrals. I hope I don't inadvertently fall out with them in any way!

You may recall in my post Be Careful Of The Search Engine Censors I have had a problem in this direction previously - and through no fault of my own.


The message from all of this must be:
(1) to use images whenever possible and
(2) always look for alternative ways to gain traffic.

Good luck,
Mike.

Insider Hot News Videos: News on video - from Entertainment to World News.

A Money Making Look At April

So that's four months of 2008 finished with. A third of the year gone, wonder if you are a third of the way to your targets or objectives - obviously you've set some!

Though I'm not a stats mad person I do look at how things are going generally at the end of each month. So I know things such as: 24.6% of visitors to this particular blog come direct whereas 42.9% arrive via Google. I also see that Web Dosh referred the most readers from other blogs (thanks John).

It's strange that two of my most read posts are from March and June of last year: Lots Of Ways On How To Make Money and How To Make Money With Chain Letters. For some reason the keywords within them show up high on Google. Could it also be those two magic words 'how to'?

This is one of the advantages of building lots of posts on varying subjects. Some of them will appeal to the search engines and to searchers in general.

As for keywords this blogs top five are: Money Making Blog, Voxant, Zlio, Mike Perry and Money Making Blogs.

My own money making for April was 'satisfactory'. One thing I have noticed though is that AdSense commission is down and this is because the clicks per impressions percentage has dropped quite a bit.

Not too sure why this is - maybe I need to shuffle things around a little or, perhaps, it's the much hyped (or at least it is in the UK) supposed possible recession. Personally I think if you tell people about something enough they will start to believe it, whether it's accurate or not.

One of the things we mustn't do in business (and money making with blogs is a business) is to see what's in the media and start to use this as excuses for not achieving our objectives. Most difficulties can be overcome. It just means we might have to make changes and try differing approaches.

So far this month (May) I've had payments from Google, Voxant and CC Bill. So that's a good start. Recession? What recession!

Good luck for May,
Mike.

P.S. John has sent me an email saying his Proven Earners Carnival is up and running.