How To Set Up A Business Blog

It’s easy to build a blog that will improve customer relationships and generate goodwill for your business. A well-designed business blog keeps your current customers engaged while allowing new clients to get acquainted with your company. Following a few simple tips, you can set up a blog that will be a powerful marketing tool for your business.

Here’s how to set up a business blog that will serve your company well…

Put It In The Right Place

If your company already has a website, make the blog part of your existing website. It should be a menu choice that’s easy for any visitor to find.

If your company doesn’t have a website, choose a domain name for your blog that’s as close to your company name as possible or includes your industry’s primary keywords.

Start With A Simple Design

Most companies power their blogs with WordPress, a blogging platform that many hosting companies will set up for you. Thousands of pre-designed WordPress themes are available, and one of them will likely work for your blog.

Blogs linked to an existing website should echo the colors and design of the site, but stand-alone blogs usually benefit from starting with a simple design. Make changes as your readership grows and you need for more features.

Pack Your Business Blog With Value

Before you tell anyone about the blog, pack it with useful articles so visitors will find good content even on their first visit. Post perhaps a dozen articles before you promote your blog, then keep posting new content at least once a week. Many experts recommend two or three posts each week.

Be sure to include coupons, exclusive offers and other deals along with meaningful content that supports your business goals.

Promote Your Blog At Every Opportunity

If you pay attention to search engine optimization techniques, Google and other search engines will bring traffic to your site, but that doesn’t mean you can neglect other means of promotion.

To get current customers reading your blog, make sure you point out during every customer contact the special offers and unique content available only to blog readers.

To bring new customers to your blog, include a mention of it in all your print and online advertising. Every time a customer sees or hears your company’s name, make sure your blog address is there along with it.

Now that you know more about how to set up a business blog, there’s no reason to delay any longer.

Blogs are powerful promotional and informational tools. Every moment your company is without one, you’re potentially losing money.

3 Ways to Make Money Online

There are many ways to make money online. I like to group them into three main categories:

1. Making money selling your stuff


2. Making money selling other people’s stuff


3. Getting paid to do something

Let’s talk a little more about each of these categories…

Way #1 – Making money selling your stuff

When most people think of starting a business they think of selling their own stuff. Here are some of the ways that people sell their own stuff online:

1. Selling products
   When I started out online my intention was to create educational software and sell it online. Like myself, most people that start a business online start off with the idea of selling a product. Almost every product imaginable can be sold online. Arguably, the easiest to create are information products.


2. Selling Services/Freelancing
   One of the quickest ways to start making money online is by selling your services. You call sell all kinds of services online. Some of the more common online services being sold are web design, freelance writing, coaching/teaching, virtual assistants, copywriting, traffic generation, and software development.


3. Domaining
   Domaining is essentially the process of buying and selling domains. While I own quite a few domains, most of them were bought with the purpose of developing them at some point in time. Although, I would be willing to sell some of them. For example, when John Reese bought trafficjam.com I wish he had contacted me about buying one of my domains blogtrafficjam.com, since I am not sure I will develop the idea I had for it when I bought it several years ago.


4. Website Flipping
   Website flipping is a very tempting business model to me. Flipping websites is a lot like flipping houses. You buy a website with the sole purpose of making it better so that you can turn around sell it. Much like house flipping, you should buy a website with good potential that is not properly monetized and/or not properly designed and marketed. After “rehabbing” the website, you can sell it at a much higher price. This process sounds like fun to me, except that I would have a hard time parting with the site after fixing it. I am more likely to buy a website, fix it up, and keep it for the residual income.

There are other ways to make money selling your own stuff, but the ones listed above are the most common.

Way #2 – Making money selling other people’s stuff

1. Affiliate Marketing
   Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to make money online, and I will be discussing it in much more detail in a future series (or a free mini-course). Essentially, affiliate marketing is revenue sharing between online advertisers/merchants and online publishers/salespeople, whereby affiliates(publisher/sales people) are paid based on performance measures, typically in the form of sales, clicks, registrations, or a combination of methods. In layman’s terms, it means you get a percentage of a sale when you sell someone else’s stuff or cause someone to take an action that might sell someone else’s stuff. It is currently my primary method of making money online.


2. Advertising Income
   Many websites make money by selling advertising space on their site. This is most commonly done on content sites. Advertising income can also be gained through other methods like selling ad space on website templates and selling ad space in newsletters.


3. Drop Shipping
   Drop shipping is a technique where you sell products from one or more suppliers who take care of shipping the products directly to the customer. All you do is take the order and get the money from the customer, then you send the order details and and part of the money that you charge to the supplier. You make profit on the difference between the suppliers price (including shipping) and the price you charge the customer. This is essentially running a wholesale business without the inventory, although you will usually pay somewhere between true wholesale and retail prices for the goods. I have seen a lot of people run drop shipping businesses on ebay.


4. Retail commerce
   Retail commerce is where you buy products at wholesale prices from wholesale distributors, carry an inventory and turn around and sell said products. Many of the ecommerce shops you see are doing this. This model is similar to drop shipping. The advantage of this method is that you can make a higher profit margin then with drop shipping, the disadvantage is that you store the inventory and you handle the details of shipping the products.

These are the most common methods for selling other people’s stuff online, although certainly not the only ones.

Way # 3 – Getting Paid To Do Something

1. Paid to sites (Paid to surf, Paid to take surveys, etc.)
   With “paid to” sites you can make a little extra money online every month. You can’t really use these sites to make a living online (at least not that I’m aware of), so I won’t be devoting more space to them here. If you’re interested in a little extra cash, and this method appeals to you, there is plenty of information available on the internet. And if you ARE making a living from these sites, and you’d be interested in writing a series on the topic, contact me.

As you are considering how YOU want to make big money online, this list should prove a good starting place . In my next post in the getting started series, I will be wrapping up with a list of resources to help you continue your quest to make money online.

How To Make Money Online

How To Make / Earn Money Online

These are resources that I highly recommend for learning how to make money online.

Yes, I am an affiliate of these products, but that’s because I really like them. There are many products you will never see me promote, because I believe they are either useless, use techniques I consider unethical, or do not live up to their price tag.

AutoResponders for email marketing

Aweber

I just started using the Aweber service and I love it. I wish had done this a long time ago. I probably should move this to a “must have” product because everyone on the web should have an email list.

Blogging

Blog Mastermind

Yaro Starak’s Blog Mastermind is THE place to learn how to make money blogging. Click here to learn more.

Business Strategy

Rich Schefren’s Strategic Profits Blog is an excellent resource for learning how to run and manage your online business effectively. I highly recommend it. And if you have never read his Internet Manifesto, then highly recommend you go download it now and read it. It’s probably the best ebook I have ever read (and it’s FREE).

Copywriting and Website Conversion Products

Dan Lok’s Instant Web Profits System

I own this excellent product, it teaches you everything you need to know about website conversion. Click here to read my review of Instant Web Profits System.

Instant Sales Letters

Instant sales letters is a set of sales letter templates that you can use by filling in the blanks with your product name. Written by Yanik Silver, these letters have very powerful marketing value. I highly recommend buying this product and modeling your sales letters after them.

Ultimate Copywriting Workshop

Yanik Silver has put examples of every single type of web copy you need for your Internet business (emails, pops, endorsements, web sites, headlines, guarantees, PPC ads, etc).

You should go sign up for the free preview. The preview includes the audio from a special 1-hour copywriting teleconference call. The audio has excellent marketing advice in it. I highly recommend you go sign up to receive your free preview.

SEO Search Engine Optmization Training

SEO Book

Aaron Wall’s SEO Book is a monthly membership site that teaches you the fundamentals of Search Engine Optimization. Aaron teaches you everything you need to know about getting traffic to a website. Everyone who owns a web business can benefit from the SEOBook. Click here to read my full review of the SEO Book training program.

SEO Keyword Tools

Market Samurai

If you could afford only one tool to do SEO research with, then I would recommend Market Samurai. Hands down it is the best keyword research tool I have ever used. I highly recommend it to anyone who is serious about SEO. Click here to check it out.

Video

Animoto is an excellent online tool you can use to create slide show videos in no time at all.

Traffic Geyser – Is an excellent tool for automating your video marketing. Just make sure you don’t use it to submit your videos to Youtube, it’s best to submit videos manually to Youtube.

Web Hosting

Hostgator – this is one of the best web hosts I have ever done business with.

Other Products To Help You Make Money Online

For starters, I highly recommend reading the free ebooks you can get by clicking here. The rest of these products are extremely helpful if you want to learn how to make BIG money online.

Yanik Silver’s Underground Online Seminar

An excellent seminar every year with people in various industries making a living off the Internet.

Ken Envoy’s SiteSell

SiteSell is one of the best places you can visit if you are looking for information on starting an online business. If you do not know how to design your own website and you can’t afford to pay a lot of money for a website designer to maintain your website, then you should take a look at SiteSell.com.

SiteSell has a great set of tools to start an online business with. You don’t need to be a web designer to set up your online business. These tools are great and make the process of designing and promoting your online business easier. Click here to see case studies…

Free Affiliate Masters Course

Excellent free ebook on affiliating marketing.

Template Monster

Template monster is “the” place to buy professionally designed website templates, including wordpress themes!

The above resources are some of my favorite products for making money online.

How To Get Approved For Google Adsense Quickly?

Making good amount of money from one’s blog is every blogger’s dream. Everyone wants to earn the max from his blog. While there are many ways of earning from a blog the most preferred method is using Adsense and direct ad sales. While Adsense is the best earning solution and one can earn a good amount from Adsense, many people find it difficult to get approved into Adsense. Many lose hope just after one attempt!

In order to maintain quality in Adsense, Google guys have to reject some applications some times. That’s natural according to me! A highly respected company can’t just approve applications blindly as they also need to take care of their advertisers. Though the Adsense team only rejects the applications which are fake, duplicate or on which displaying Adsense ads will cause harm, sometimes even genuine and non-duplicate applications get rejected. I know how bad it feels to get rejected! Read myAdsense story and why I was approved in Adsense after a long time after many tries! Let’s without wasting another second get into the topic.

How To Get Approved For Adsense Fast?

1.) Use Real Names and NOT Nicknames

While this mistake is rarely done, there are a few people who unknowingly use their nicknames while registering. While there is nothing in a name, I feel using a nickname may get your account rejected. I always suggest using your real names.

2.) Apply Only Once

If you have two blogs both not having Adsense, do not apply for two Adsense accounts for both blogs. If you’ve submitted an application and have not received the approval or rejection e-mail, please do not apply for another account. I’m sure the e-mail will come. Though it will take time, it will come. Normally it takes about 2 days, but it may take more time if there are some holidays. Apply only once!

3.) Make Your Blog Has Good Content Both In Quantity & Quality

Adsense team only approves the sites which have good content both in terms of quality and quantity. They both should be in equal level. Concentrate on both the issues. I suggest focusing on “Quality” first because I feel people see the quality of the article and not the number of articles in your blog. So focus on quality (60 percent) + quantity (40 percent).

4.) Good Traffic

A blog with no or very less traffic is not at all suitable for Adsense. How can a blog with no visitors make money with Adsense? I mean if Adsense team will approve each and every account (Even sites with very less or no traffic at all) I think it will be useless. It will only increase the database size! :P

Make sure you have good traffic before you apply for Adsense.

5.) Make Your Site Look Professional

A site with unprofessional and messy look won’t get approved in Adsense. Along with the content the site style and look also matters.

A few tips for improving your site look and making it look professional:

1.) Use light colors.

2.) Keep design simple.

3.) Add links to all your important pages.

4.) Ensure easy navigation.

Hope the article helped you! If you follow the tips mentioned above I can ensure you that your account will be approved. Just follow all the tips and then apply. If everything goes right, your application will be approved quickly! If you have any queries big or small, please contact me using the contact form or just comment in this post. I will get back to you soon! And please don’t forget to share your views on this post!

5 Ways to Make Money Online with Google

If you can’t lounge around the well-known, award-winning Google HQ offices as an employee, there are other ways to make money off the big G.

1. Blogger - Whether you’re running ads, selling products, promoting affiliates, or using this blog platform as a way to promote your business or services, this Google service can aid you in making money online.

2. AdSense – This is one common way to monetise blogs and websites. Also see: How Adsense Publishers Can Make More Money.

3. AdWords – You can advertise your business, products, or services using AdWords. This is, of course, in conjunction with the Adsense programme.

4. Google Image Labeler – Just a roundabout way of making money by tagging photos online.

5. Google Checkout – Use this online payment system to help you process your web business transactions.

How to Earn Money Online?

How to earn money online? How to create a winning site? How to earn money from my blog?

These are the most frequently asked questions on the Internet, which remains without a proper and accurate response. In this site you will learn how to earn money online for FREE.

There are 7 ways to earn money online:

1. Files Exchange so that visitors pay to reach your content. Profits are really big.

2. Selling items on your website. Or sell products for some online shop. Requires very good SEO optimization for good returns. A good example is the Amazon.com Associates.

3. Income from affiliate programs are really significant. But not only the content is important for success you must be good at promotion and sales to earn money. Affiliate marketing means directly promotion of real product (medicines, books, online casino, software, and many others.) by specially designed web site.

4. Ads. This is the latest hot trend in making money for websites with huge traffic.Some of them are Google AdSense, Yahoo! Publisher, Bidvertiser, AdBrite.

5. Paid-to-Click (PTC). PTC sites show you many advertisers and their products, which in most cases are innovative and enterprising 

techniques for promotion made to achieve the financial results! 

To achieve maximum results, PTC sites pay between $0.0025 - $0.01 per click Click is a unique visit which is registered by the advertiser and he paid to the site and site pay to you. Many of these sites (98%) appear to be a SCAM - which means sites do not pay to their members.

6. Multi-Level Marketing (MLM), is one of the fastest growing forms of making money online. Multi-Level Marketing (MLM), s a network of distributors who advertise the products of some company. They found new customers and distribute these products.

Profits in Multi-Level Marketing MLM realized in two ways:

* Individual sales - you buy products at a lower price and then sell them to the client;

* Building a network - you build a network through which distribute products and earn money. The company paid a commission for your sales.

The fact is that this is a dynamic world, no matter where you live, and time is crucial. The quickest way to earn money is MLM! Companies like Hewlett Packard, IBM and McDonald's are on many levels, they are MLM. The military also operate with system of many levels!

7. Earn money with viral marketing - You get the idea (to earn money online) or something else - create a website! Made promotional videos, interactive Flash games, books, software, graphics, text articles. And post them in YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and other social networks. 

The main idea of viral marketing is the people themselves to spread your idea for FREE. It can develop traffic very quickly if users pass "your stuff" to many friends. From which you earn money!

How Social Media Affects Our Brain?

Social media tools have become an essential part of our everyday lives. It’s inevitable that our over-dependence on social media is going to change the way we think and the way our brains functions. Twitter’s short message of 140 characters has certainly changed the way we send and receive information. The average attention span of people in the present Internet and social media age is 5 second long. Ten years down the line, it was 12 minutes or more than that.

We don’t exercise our memory power as much these days. Forget about remembering your friend’s birthday, you can always rely on Facebook to remind you about Birthdays and other important events. But, social media is not all that bad. It can also have positive impact on us and our lives. Research has shown that social media interactions can stimulate the production of ‘Oxytocin’, the hormone that generates the feeling of trust and empathy, and is often released during face-to-face interactions with close friends. Our body’s stress level also drops when we are interacting with people over social media.

5 Web Strategies that Paid Off in 2011

While building my online presence and working on small client projects over a three year period, I devised, tested and evaluated a wide variety of web-based marketing, branding and communication strategies and techniques, and discussed them on Online Social Networking.

In November 2010, I seized an opportunity that arose to join a major luxury goods company and test my strategies and techniques in a competitive real-world environment. The results were outstanding. Not only was enormous buzz created, the business was able to dramatically increase its authority and credibility within the trade and with the media.

I credit just five very simple ideas with our success:

1. Building a core group of websites around which the company’s entire web presence was built.
2. Fully aligning web content with the company’s mission and message.
3. Creating a great quantity of top quality, expertly edited and search engine optimized content.
4. Using plenty of images and videos to enhance our written content.
5. Leveraging numerous online and offline sources, such as SEO, social networking sites, social bookmarking sites, email, print ads and word-of-mouth, to generate a flood of targeted traffic to the company’s web content.

Of course the details of implementation were far from trivial. They needed to be worked out along the way, and yours will too.

I shall elaborate on these five web strategies in future articles.