By that I mean when it comes to the promotion and marketing of your blog, you have to keep up with your fellow bloggers. If you ease up, take your foot off the gas and let things slip even a little bit, you’ll do more harm than good to your blog’s chances to make money for you.

One of the best way of keeping up the momentum and to enjoy yourself in the process is to go and visit some other blogs in your niche. That way you get to see what other bloggers are doing to make money and to see what they’re blogging about. If some of them have posted something you know a bit about, then you can leave them a comment.

That has a three-fold benefit for your blog.

1. If they have a “do-follow” policy then you gain a valuable one-way inbound link to your own blog
2. Other readers of those comments will see yours and if it interests them, they’ll click you link to see what you are writing about on your blog
3. The owner of the blog will also see your comment and may also visit your blog out of curiosity and may even leave a comment for you

That all increases traffic flow to your blog. It also makes you some friends of other bloggers who are happy to have you visit their blog for the same reasons you’re happy for them to visit yours. In fact, reciprocal blog visiting is a great way for lots of bloggers to boost their traffic stats. That’s why so many of them belong to some of the blogging social networking sites, like MyBlogLog and BlogCatalog.

So not only are you keeping up with the Joneses and all the other bloggers in your community, but you’re all helping each other to make money and to prosper in the promotion game too!

Terry Didcott
MAKE MONEY

After a long break, it’s time to get back to the small series on the many and varied ways to make money with your blog. This instalment covers affiliate marketing.

I know I’ve already covered the workings of Clickbank in an earlier article, but what I didn’t cover is the actual nuts and bolts of using affiliate marketing directly on your blog to make money. Now it’s time.

Often, you’ll have a real good selection of affiliate products that fit nicely with the theme of your blog and now you want to display them to show them all off in their best light. So where do you put them?

Well, I’ve found that it is counter productive to put a whole long list of affiliate products right on the front page (or homepage) of your blog or website, as your visitors will most likely be overwhelmed with an advertising blitz that could turn them off your site. Better to display a small selection of your better selling products on your main page and have the rest well displayed in a sub-page.

You’ll see that in practice right here on this site.

The blog is the main page and where 99% of visitors will land first - it being the page first displayed when you type in the top level domain name in your browser (or link from a search engine or whatever). On the navigation bar below the header banner of the site is a navigation bar with sub-pages such as an article page and, most importantly from this post’s point of view, a “resources” page.

This “resources” page is where all the affiliate products that I promote on this site are located along with a graphic of the ebook (or product) and a brief review of the product with a link to the sales page. That link contains my affiliate code so that (assuming they haven’t got cookie disabling software running on their computer) the potential buyer will alert Clickbank to the fact that my affiliate link has generated the sale and I will be credited with the commission.

That’s pretty much how it works from a blog like this one which is professionally hosted so I have more control over what I put where. But you can still do it on a free blog by creating separate “pages” and using them to list your affiliate products and make money from them.

I love blogging, don’t you?

Terry Didcott
MAKE MONEY

I ran this idea on one of my other blogs and as it was quite successful, I decided to spin it out over here too.

The idea is this:

I’ve noticed that more and more bloggers are creating a box in their sidebar, or wherever that says something like: “Please donate to buy me a coffee”. Below is the strategically placed PayPal button with it’s metaphorical hand out assuming the begging position.

Well, maybe they spend a lot of time writing their blogs and maybe they even drink a lot of coffee. But to blatantly ask their readers to give them money?

For what?

For time spent writing their bog? I don’t think so!

How about a dose of reality…

People come to your blog to read your articles and posts and assuming they’re good, people will come back to read more. That’s what every good blogger wants and should be working hard to achieve - a regular flow of interested and loyal readers. The reward is in seeing your readership increase to the point where you can then approach advertisers and offer them some space on your blog which they will want to pay you for because you have good readership (traffic) figures.

That’s how magazines work. And a blog is just another form of media to advertisers.

The magazines with the highest readerships (distribution) get to charge the most for their ad space. The same goes for blogs.

So from my point of view, rather than try to sponge off my regular and loyal readers (which I work hard to attract and keep) and frighten them away, isn’t it better to keep them by NOT asking for handouts? Much better to keep people interested, happy and wanting to come back for more by giving them great articles and interesting, informative and entertaining content.

For the sake of maybe losing a few dollars under the guise of buying me a beer or a sandwich or a pork chop even, I’d rather give good value for free. Then get my payback from advertisers later on in the grand scheme of things.

However…

If any reader does feel inclined to want to help this blog financially, I won’t stand in your way. But I won’t accept money for nothing (or even coffee), either.

I do have a rather good eBook that I have written, entitled “The Secrets of SEO Revealed“. I’d be happy to sell a copy to anyone who might have a use for it (that should include everyone with a blog or website). It’s a very reasonable $9.97 and for that price you get a second bonus eBook thrown in for free.

So it’s not a donation in any way shape or form. It’s simply a straight, honest purchase of something tangible and useful.

If you want a copy, you can click HERE to see the sales page and make a purchase (and that would make me really happy).

Terry Didcott
MAKE MONEY