How Affiliate Marketing Works

Flex Offers is an affiliate marketing program. Here's how it works. Many companies want to advertise their products or services on blogs and websites (referred to in the business as publishers). Rather than developing the systems in-house to do this and reaching out to publishers one at a time, they use the services of an affiliate marketer like Flex Offers. Flex Offers does two things for these companies. First, it develops the relationships with publishers. Publishers sign up with the affiliate program, thereby gaining access to market the products and services of all the companies that have contracted with the affiliate. Second, Flex Offers takes care of all the accounting systems to make sure that publishers get credit for the sales they generate.

And that brings us to how publishers make money. When you sign up for Flex Offers, you get access to text links and banners for a variety of products and services that you can place on your website or blog. Here at The Dough Roller, I obviously focus on financial products, but Flex Offers has a wide variety of products and services to choose from. When a visitor clicks on a link or banner and buys the product or service, the publisher gets a small commission. The amount of the commission varies depending on the product or service and the volume that each publisher generates.

How to sign up and use Flex Offers

Joining Flex Offers is both free and easy. The first step is to sign up for Flex Offers, which you can do by clicking here (but make sure you read about the bonus below first). The sign up process takes just a few minutes. Remember, they will ask you for your social security number and eventually you'll need to complete a W-9 (gotta love the IRS). Once you are approved, you can then apply to promote any of the products or services offered by Flex Offers. Applying to promote a given product or service is literally as easy as checking a box and hitting the apply button.

To give you an idea, here are some of the companies Flex Offers promotes:

• Overstock.com
• CompUSA.com
• Walter Drake
• McAfee
• iTunes
• WT Direct
• American Express
• Citibank
• Priceline.com

Flex Offer's $200 Bonus

Since joining Flex Offers is free, you'd think there would be no reason to offer a bonus. But for a limited time, Flex Offers will pay out a $200 bonus once you earn your first $1,000 in commissions. Now I won't kid you, earning $1,000 in commissions takes a lot of effort. If you added up all the income I earned blogging when I first started, it took me about eight months to make my first $1,000. But it's a lot like investing. As you grow your business, the money compounds. Now I have single days where I make more than $1,000 (no, not just from this site, and no, not every day). The point is that money can be made if you put the effort into learning the business, and Flex Offers can help you get there.

So to get the bonus, when you sign up, make sure to use the promo code "FlexCash."

Using Flex Offers is easy

Using Flex Offers to promote products and services is very easy. For example, each of the banners and bullets below required just a single line of code that Flex Offers provides:

It's literally as simple as cut and paste.

If you have any questions, the folks at Flex Offers are great to work with and will answer your questions. And feel free to contact me as well.

P.S. If you are just starting out, be sure to check out a series that Patrick at Cash Money Life has just started--How to Start a Blog for Fun or Profit.

Hello,
I really like your tutorial on how to make money blogging except I am sort of confused. Can I make a site or host a domain about any subject really and make money or does it have to be about money in particular? Like your credit card site and your other sites seem to do with just particularly money or money related. I that the general theme for making the money, or can it be about say cd reviews or something like that? Any direction will be greatly appreciated.

The second came in the form of a comment to a blog post about how to earn extra income:

Hi DR,

I love your site and was wondering if you had completed the post on how you make $2500 monthly yet? I desperately would like to create a passive income stream, but have not been able to decide which path to take, so I would really like to see what works for you. Besides blogging?

Thanks for your help and input. I also liked your posts on the 4HWW (DR Note: 4 Hour Work Week). I also read the book and enjoyed it, but have yet to try anything. Once I decide what might work best for me though, I’m sure I will.

Thanks again.

Let me start with the second comment, which was to a blog post I wrote back in June 2007. At that time I noted that I was making $1,500 a month online (now I make that in under a week). I also promised to write further posts describing how I do it. The starting point of an online adventure, whether you want to start a blog or more traditional website, is to set up a well designed and optimized site. I've written several detailed articles describing how to do this. If you've missed them, you can check out these articles here:

• Make Money Blogging–Setting Up a WordPress Blog in 3 Easy Steps
• How to start a money making WordPress blog
• 5 Must Have WordPress SEO Plugins for a Money Making Blog
• How to Optimize a WordPress Theme for Search Engines

With that foundation in place, we now turn to the question of blog topics. Whether you are just starting out or are an experienced blogger looking to start another site, the question is the same: how do we go about picking the subject of a blog that can allow us to generate a steady cash flow online.

You can make money online in a thousand different ways with content on just about any subject. I write a lot about personal finance, investing and money management because that's what I enjoy writing about. But people make a lot of money online writing about paintball guns, golf clubs, bicycles, politics, and anything else you can think of, including CD reviews. Here's the fundamental truth about making money online--if you can drive the right kind of traffic to your site, you can make money.

That being said, picking the topic(s) that is right for you is a simple 3-step process.

Step 1: Follow your interests

As a starting point, I look for topics that I have an interest in and experience with. When I started blogging in May 2007, I wrote about personal finance and investing. I enjoy studying these topics, I read and analyze financial statements for a living, and it's a lot of fun for me to write about these subjects. But there is something more fundamental at play here.

When you write about a topic you have some experience with, it shows. The writing flows much more naturally, and the content of your articles reflects a depth that only experience with the subject can produce. When you read a personal finance blogger discussing investing, you can tell quickly if they know what they are talking about, even if you do not agree with everything they say. For example, when you read Pinyo's posts on investing on his blog, Moolanomy, you know he speaks from experience. The same is true with blogs about making money online. When you read my articles on setting up an optimized blog, while you may disagree with some of my approaches, I think you would agree that the articles reflect some level of experience with the subject.

You can blog about a topic you know little about. But the amount of work to produce the content will be greater (unless you pay for the content). My advice, however, is to stick with what you know.

Step 2: Decide how you will monetize the site

It is absolutely critical to determine how you will monetize your site during the process of picking a topic. As I've written before, there are countless ways to make money blogging. Generally speaking, however, making money online falls into two categories: (1) Adsense, and (2) affiliate sales. Yes, you can make money selling text links or banners, and there are ad networks that pay per impressions. But most sites stick with Adsense and affiliate sales.

On this site, I use both. Adsense represents a relatively small portion of my income. Last month I made about $1,500 in Adsense, and that was an unusually good month. More typical is $800 to $1,000. For me, most of my income comes from a variety of affiliate sales.

If you decide to monetize using Adsense, the analysis is quite simple. You simply have to determine how much potential traffic your topic can generate and the value of that traffic for an Adsense publisher (Step 3 below covers this research). If you are looking to monetize your site with affiliate sales, you should identify affiliate programs that offer products and services relevant to your site.

To use the music CD example referred to in the email above, there are several affiliate programs that would enable you to market and sell music.

Amazon: Amazon sells just about everything. From books, to music, to movies, to table saws. Commission rates begin at 4% of the purchase price, quickly go to 6%, and can go as high as 15% for top sellers. You can check out the details and apply for the program on the Amazon Associates Website.

eBay: Through the eBay Partner Network, you can display eBay ads on any product for sale on eBay. If a reader clicks through and buys the product, you get a commission from eBay. Commissions start at 50% of the revenue eBay generates from the sale and goes up to 75% for top sellers. You can also receive a commission if a user clicks through your site to eBay and signs up as a registered user. For a music CD site, you'd obviously have a lot to promote from eBay.

And now you start to think outside the box. For example, you can promote online music downloading sites like Apple's iTunes and Napster. Both have affiliate programs through Commission Junction.

Maybe you think about selling iPods and other MP3 players. You've already got the iPods covered through the Apple affiliate program. There are numerous affiliate programs that cover electronics, in addition to Amazon and eBay. Sony, HP, and Dell, for example, all have affiliate programs through Commission Junction.

Maybe you decide to branch out into DVDs. Not only can you promote DVDs through the affiliates listed above, but you can also promote Netflix and Blockbuster (yep, through Commission Junction). By now you get the idea. Your biggest limitation will be your own imagination. If you are looking for ideas, look at other blogs and see what they market.

Step 3: Research, Research, Research

No matter what topic you pick or how you plan to monetize the site, research is absolutely critical. So what exactly are we researching, and how do we go about doing it? At a minimum, we need to answer the following three questions:

1. What are the primary keywords that are relevant to the site;
2. How competitive are those keywords (i.e., how many other sights are working hard to rank for those keywords); and
3. How much are those keywords worth from Adsense.

So let's do this analysis for a music cd site.

1. What are the primary keywords that are relevant to the site?

There are many online keyword research tools. Many are free, some require a monthly subscription. I've used both. But as a starting point, I always go to Google Adwords' Keyword Tool. The tool is free and provides information not found with other keyword tools.

Let's start by entering "cd" in the keyword box. Once I get the results, I typically click on the "Approx Avg Search Volume" column to order the list by search volume, from highest to lowest. Here's what it looks like for the keyword "cd" (click on the image to enlarge):

Before diving into the results, there are a few options you should understand:

Choose column to display: In the upper right hand corner you will see a drop down box that allows you to display or hide various columns. We will come back to that in a moment, but recognize that the tool can provide more information than what is initially displayed.

Match type: Just below the drop down to select what information to display, you will see another drop down box for the match type. It is critical that you understand how this works. The tool offers four match types: broad, phrase, exact, and negative. Here's what each means:

• Broad match: Includes searches for a keyword phrase in which the words appear in any order and in combination with other keywords. May also include searches with similar keywords. For example, broad match search data for the keyword music CD includes searches for CD music, CD with music, and my personal favorite, the music rocks that I put on my CD last night, dude." I know, I'm so 1970s. Setting the match type to broad will result in the largest search volume total.
• Phrase match: With phrase match, the search volume data includes searches using the keyword phrase in the order listed, but possibly including other words. For example, phrase match search data for the keyword music CD includes searches for rock music CD, music CD labels, but not CD music.
• Exact match: Here, search volume includes only those searches for the listed keyword exactly as is with no additional words added in the search. For music CD, it gives you search volume for music CD only.
• Negative match: This match type is not all that important to us now, but it allows you to exclude certain keywords from the data.

So with this information, let's check out the results for CD. With the match type set to broad, the keyword CD produces more than 20 million searches a month on Google alone. Now the question everybody asks is how to determine the number of search engine visitors a site would receive if it ranked #1 for a given search term. As a very broad estimate, I expect to get about 50% of the estimated traffic using the exact match type. For CD using the exact match type, Google estimates 165,000 searches a month. So the #1 spot would produce about 82,500 search visitors a month.

Now let's head back to reality. The keyword CD is much too broad and competitive to target as a keyword for a new site. Just search Google for CD and check out the first page results. So let's focus on a more obvious choice, music CD, and rerun the keyword tool with that keyword.

The results show that with the exact match, only music cd and music cds get any descent monthly traffic. After that, the results fall significantly. While these may be keywords worth targeting, focusing on the keyword music cd may not be the best approach. So let's try music reviews.

The results show 12,100 searches using the exact match type. And here's where you realize that the greater the search volume, the more competitive the keyword. 12,100 searches is not a big number, but the keyword music reviews describes quite well the site we are thinking of starting. You can continue to use this tool to research many other related keywords, but you get the idea.

And this brings me to step two of the research, our competition.

2. How competitive are the keywords we've chosen?

To assess the competition, the first thing I do is look at the top 10 search results for the keyword. A search of "music reviews" reveals some interesting data. First note that, at least as of this writing, the search returned 49,900,000 results. You will see the search result totals toward the upper right hand section of the Google search results page. I think small numbers tell you more than the big ones. Any search result with less than 1,000,000 results is small. Fifty million is big, but not necessarily indicative of how competitive the keyword is.

Next I look at the page rank of the top 10 results. There are several ways to get at this data, but the easiest is to use the SEO for Firefox plugin. This is a great tool that provides a wealth of information, including the page rank for websites listed in the search results. For music reviews, we see that the page rank for the first 10 sites ranges from 4 to 7. That alone tells me the keyword is very competitive. Certainly a new site has no chance of ranking in the top ten, but with enough time, quality content and backlinks, its possible. Certainly achieving a PR of 4 is not extremely difficult.

Another tool you can use to assess the competition for a keyword is the Keyword Difficulty tool available on SEOmoz.org. If you are not familiar with the site, you should be. It has both free content and premium content that requires a monthly membership. Unfortunately, the Keyword Difficulty tool and many of the sites other tools are available only with a paid membership. But since I've paid my dues, so to speak, let me run "music reviews" through the tool and see what we get. Hold on, I'll be right back. . . .

The tool produces a difficulty score of 71% (out of 100%), which indicates that this is a tough nut to crack. SEOMoz describes the keyword as "highly competitive." In addition, it estimates that the term was searched over 35,000 times yesterday. A big difference from what the Google adwords tool showed, which underscores that search estimates are just that, estimates. Now does all of this mean we should give up on the site or this keyword? No!

I would do more research for additional keywords to target. You could look to longer tail keywords. For example, in addition to music reviews, how about jazz music reviews. You could focus on keywords related to specific artists, genres, recording labels, and so on. With something as broad as music, you could find plenty of topics/keywords to focus on.

Before we move to step 3, there are two additional points to keep in mind. First, it's a good idea to look at the top 10 search results for a keyword you are targeting. For example, the #1 result for "music reviews" is Metacritic, a site run by CNET Networks. Metacritic is a professional run site, as are several others in the top 10 search results. This will give you an idea about your competition, including how they monetize their sites. Metacritic, for example, uses banners to eBay and, of all things, Discover credit cards.

Second, you can look to see what keywords these top sites target. Looking at the title bar in your browser while viewing MetaCritic, you will see "Music Reviews, CD Reviews - Metacritic.com." That tells you the site is targeting music reviews and cd reviews. Some sites use meta keywords that you can see by selecting the view-->page source on your browser. Billboard Music Reviews, for example, which currently ranks #3 for "music reviews," uses the following keywords on its homepage: Music Reviews, Business News Magazine, Music Executives, music trivia, and Music games.

3. How much are those keywords worth from Adsense?

Finally, if you intend to monetize your site with Adsense, it is important to understand how much you can make per click. As a starting point, go back to the Adwords keyword tool and type in "music reviews." When the results appear, go to the "Choose columns to display" drop down box and select "show estimated avg cpc." This will show you an estimate of what an advertiser would have to pay each time somebody clicked on their ad. There is more to it than that, but the key is that this shows what Google would charge the advertiser, not what you would make on your site per click. As a general rule of thumb, however, take about 25% of the listed amount and that's roughly what you would make.

I should ad here that many, many factors go into how much a publisher makes on any given adsense click. But this will give you a rough idea. For music reviews, the listed cost is $.87. Multiply that by 25% and you are not left with much. By comparison, see what an ad would cost for the keyword "payday loans." I'm showing $8.17. No try "Mesothelioma." I get $23.65. The point here is simply that not all keywords or blog topics are created equal. Do your research and you'll begin to get a good idea of what pays what.

Homework

Yes, there's homework. Whether you are new to blogging or not, research a blog topic that interests you with the goal of selecting a keyword to target (whether it is for the homepage, category page, or an individual post). You should be able to answer the following questions about the keyword:

1. An estimate of the number of times the keyword is searched each month;

2. An understanding of the top 10 competitors who rank on the first page of Google for the keyword. Things to look for with these competitors include: (a) page rank; (b) age of site; (c) backlinks; (d) and whether the result is to the site's homepage, category page, or individual article;

3. How you plan to monetize your site/page; and

4. The value of the keyword for Adsense.

I'll be following these steps for my Energy Saving Gadgets site. Until next Saturday, happy blogging.

Get the book--99 Painless Ways to Save Serious Money!]]> http://www.doughroller.net/make-money-blogging/pick-lucrative-online-business/feed/ 12 http://www.doughroller.net/make-money-blogging/50-ways-make-money-blogging/ http://www.doughroller.net/make-money-blogging/50-ways-make-money-blogging/#comments Sat, 30 Aug 2008 12:20:25 +0000 DR http://www.doughroller.net/?p=1023 A reader recently e-mailed me with a question that I get a lot. How does one make money blogging? Here's the e-mail:

"How do I make money from blogging? And where does my payment come from? Do I have to sell my articles to a magazine? I am confused at how this actually works and where the money comes from."

Because it wasn't that long ago that I knew nothing about blogging, let alone making money blogging, I can relate to this question. So in this article, we will take a look in detail at 50 ways bloggers make money. But first, let me try to talk you out of starting a money making blog.

Profitable Blogging is Simple, But Not Easy

I wrote an article last year arguing that attaining financial freedom is simple, but not easy. It's simple in that all one needs is to earn a reasonable income, live below their means, and intelligently invest the difference. But it ain't easy. It's difficult to deny ourselves "stuff" when we have the money or credit to buy it. Profitable blogging is similar.

Fifteen months ago I knew nothing about blogging. Since then I've built a reasonably successful blog that will generate about $2,500 in revenue this month. Some months are better, others a little less. I suspect by year end I will have earned $20,000 to $25,000, and I expect next year to be even better--all in my spare time. And the top bloggers make much more. But here's the catch.

I get up ever morning at 5 am to work on the blog. I write articles on the subway to and from work every day. Most work days I spend my lunch hour writing articles (when I'm not playing speed chess in the park). And here I am on a sunny Saturday afternoon writing this article.

On top of the time commitment, you must be a problem solver. I knew nothing about WordPress, html, php, adsense, or affiliate products when I started--I had to teach myself. For me, that was part of the fun. I can remember spending literally five hours trying to figure out how to flow text around the right side of an image I had inserted into a post. What's the best way to market a blog? How should I balance content with ads? How do I get an ad to show up only on certain articles? How can I change the background color of a menu item when it's selected? And the list goes on.

An article written more than two years ago by Steve Pavlina makes this same point--profitable blogging is simple, but not easy.

If I haven't scared you away, then keep reading.

Traffic, Traffic, Traffic

One more thing before I get to some concrete ways to generate blogging income. It all hinges on traffic. You can't make meaningful money blogging with 20 visitors a day. I started earning hundreds of dollars a month when I started getting hundreds of visitors a day. That took me about 6 months. While there are plenty of examples of bloggers who hit instant success on the launch of their blog, for must of us it takes time. It takes time to generate content; it takes time to get noticed by Google; it takes time to build relationships with other bloggers. I almost gave up many times. I'm glad I didn't.

This article is not about building traffic. I've already written about SEO Copywriting--How to Get Your Article to the Top of Google. There are many ways to generate traffic beyond SEO, but I'll save that for another article.

50 Ways to Make Money Blogging

Update: Flex Offers is a new affiliate program that allows you to promote products and services from hundreds of participating companies. Sign up is free, and Flex Offers is offering a $200 bonus after you earn your first $1,000 in commissions. Just use the promo code, "FlexCash" when signing up.

Pay Per Click (PPC)

PPC ads pay out when a reader clicks on the ad. The payouts typically vary based on a number of factors including the type of ad, the value of the keywords that generated the ad, the click through rate (CTR) for the blog, and the age of the blog. Google's Adsense is the most widely recognized and used PPC program, but there are other options.

1. Google's Adsense program is perhaps the single biggest reason for the explosive growth of blogs. A blogger can insert Adsense code into a post or sidebar and begin earning money immediately.
2. Yahoo! Publisher is similar to Google's Adsense, but not as widely used. The only bloggers I know using Yahoo! Publisher are those that are banned from Google's Adsense for violating its Terms of Service.
3. BidVertiser is another alternative to Adsense. Unlike Adsense which only pays out once a blogger has earned $100 (which took me 5 to 6 months), BidVertiser pays out at $10.
4. Clicksor offers several different types of ads, including text banner ads similar to Adsense and inline text ads.

Shopping Networks

Shopping networks is my designation for affiliate programs that offer you the ability to advertise a wide variety of products on your sites. Most of these programs pay out a percentage of sales generated from your site, although Chitika is a pay per click program.

5. Amazon is well known for books, but you can buy just about anything from Amazon. As an affiliate program, it pays bloggers a percentage of sales, beginning at 4% but quickly increasing to 6% and more depending on the number of items sold each month. You can insert text links into posts or banner ads to promote just about anything.
6. Chitika offers PPC ads based on the subject of the post or blog in which they appear. Here's an example of what a Chitika ad would look like in an article about investing:

   

7. WidgetBucks is very similar to Chitika except that its ads tend to take more advantage of images.
8. Shopping.com is a PPC program that pays bloggers per click to drive traffic to various merchants.
9. Overstock.com pays up to 7% commission on sales generated through your site. Similar to Amazon, you can promote merchandise sold at Overstock on your blog or website.
10. Shopzilla is similar to Amazon and Overstock.
11. Ebay offers two ways to generate income. First, you earn a commission if somebody registers for Ebay through a link on your site. Second, you earn 50% of the commission Ebay receives when the winner bidder for an item clicked through to Ebay from your site. You can insert both text and banner ads to promote products for sale on Ebay.

Affiliate Offers

Like Amazon, affiliate offers provide an opportunity to promote products or services on your site. As an affiliate, you typically earn a percentage of the revenue generated or a fixed fee per sale. In addition to the shopping networks listed above, there are affiliate companies you can join that offer dozens if not hundreds of different affiliate programs. The benefit is that you get access to hundreds of products and services through each affiliate that you join. Here are the major players to consider:

12. Commission Junction is arguably the best known online advertising company. Through CJ, you can promote everything from credit cards to Apple products to clothing.
13. Flex Offers is one of my favorite affiliate programs. It allows you to promote credit cards and provides a wealth of information about each card offer. Payouts are good and the folks at Flex Offers are very helpful. As with every affiliate program I've ever used, it's free to join.
14. CommissionSoup is similar to CJ, but it focuses on financial products, which are ideal of personal finance and investing blogs.
15. PepperJam gets an A+ for the coolest user interface. It offers a number of great affiliates. For a limited time, it is offering a $10 bonus for those that join PepperJam and $10 for every post those bloggers who have joined the program write about PepperJam. I don't write paid reviews (and no, I didn't get $10 from PepperJam to write this), but if you want to write paid posts, PepperJam is a great place to start. And quite apart from this incentive, it offers some very good affiliate programs to promote.
16. LinkShare offers a variety of products and services you can promote. I joined LinkShare initially because of the ShareBuilder affiliate program.
17. AzoogleAds gets high marks from a lot of super affiliates. Some of the more prominent affiliate programs it offers are Vonage, GE, and Blockbuster.
18. ClickBank is just another option with many affiliate programs to promote.
19. Never Blue Ads is one I signed up for but have never really used. Like ClickBank, it tends to promote affiliates that are outside of the mainstream. Depending on the content of your blog, though, it may be a great choice.

There are many other companies that publishers can sign up with and gain access to dozens of affiliate programs, but the list above represents some of the more popular programs.

Inline Contextual Ads

You can add code to your blog that will automatically search each article and create text links on keywords to promote products. You then get paid when a user clicks on one of the links. Amazon has a similar tool where your payment is based on a percentage of sales. Apart from Amazon, here are two of the big names with this type of advertising.

20. Intellitxt by Vibrant Media "reads web pages and double-underlines words and word-phrases dynamically and in real time. The code is installed by publishers into their sites and does not require any additional code, adware or spyware to be downloaded or uploaded by a user." One thing to note about Vibrant Media is that your blog or website must receive 500,000 page views a month to qualify. If you site isn't there yet, check out the next option.
21. Kontera does the same thing as Intellitxt, but you don't need 500,000 page views to qualify. You can check out a demo of Kontera here

Text Links

Text link ads are similar to inline contextual ads, except they often are listed in the sidebar or footer of your site, not within the articles themselves. I should warn you here that Google will penalize your site for text link ads. It's an odd thing that Google seems to have gone after those selling text link placement and not those buying them. Search on terms like "credit cards" or "payday loans," and I guarantee you the first page results are websites spending tons of money on text links. While Google seems to have closed its corporate eyes on the buyers, it will hammer some small site trying to earn a few bucks if it detects a paid link. That said, here are some sites to consider if you want to earn money with paid text links.

22. Text Link Ads
23. DigitalPoint Link Sales Forum
24. Text-Link-Brokers
25. TNX
26. LinkWorth
27. Clicksor
28. SmartLinks

You can also sell your own text links directly with the websites looking to buy them. Just put contact information on your blog, and eventually you will start getting e-mail inquires. Although I do not sell text links on The Dough Roller, direct sales with the advertiser are the most profitable way to make money with text links because you do not have to split the revenue with a text link broker such as LinkWorth or Text Link Ads.

Pay Per Post

Companies will pay you a per post fee to write reviews about their products or services. This is not something I've done, but I know a number of bloggers who have. My only suggestion here is to make clear in the article that it is a paid review.

29. Review Me
30. Sponsored Reviews
31. Pay Per Post
32. LoudLaunch
33. BlogVertise
34. Smorty

Ad Networks

Ad Networks are companies that offer a variety of advertisers for your site and usually pay on a per impression basis. You may see the designation eCPM, which refers to earnings per 1,000 page impressions, although most networks offer a variety of ways to monetize a site. These networks also typically offer a variety of ad formats. Some of the major players in this space include the following:

35. Casale Media
36. Burst Media
37. Value Click
38. BlogHerAds (Note: While the ad company is geared toward female bloggers, it does accept applications from anybody.)
39. Tribal Fusion
40. Advertising.com
41. Gorilla Nation
42. Blue Lithium

Pop-Up Ads

As the name suggests, pop-up ads appear on a users screen when they visit your site. The user can either click on the ad or close it to continue to your site. If you want to ad pop-ups to your site, there are several options to consider. As with many advertising options, those listed below offer a variety of ad formats, not just pop-up ads.

43. PopupAd
44. PayPopup

Other Ways to Make Money Blogging

45. Pheedo enables you to place advertisements in your site's feed, including a Feedburner feed. Until recently, there were few options to monetize a Feedburner feed, and none was all that terrific. Google has just started permitting publishers to ad Adsense to feeds. Pheedo places banner ads in feeds.
46. Vizu Answers enables you to add polls to your site to ask your readers anything you want. By itself, polls are a great way to engage your readers, and I've used a poll WordPress plugin on this site from time to time. With Vizu Answers, however, you can also incorporate market research polls into your site that can generate revenue.
47. ING Direct Savings Referrals allow you to offer readers a $25 bonus when the sign up for an ING Direct savings or checking account, and you get $10. You must have an ING Direct account. You can then use the Refer-a-Friend feature to email links to yourself. Simply copy the links into your site for readers to use to sign up for an ING Direct account.
48. ScratchBack has a unique way for bloggers to make money. Using their code, you add a widget to your blog that allows others to tip you through paypal, and in exchange, they get a link within the widget on your site. This is not a traditional text link ad, but you are being tipped in exchange for a text link.

Now at this point you are probably feeling cheated because I promised 50 ways to make money blogging, but have only listed 48. Well, the rest is up to you. If you know of another way to generate income from blogging, leave a comment or send me an email. If you are a blogger and I add your idea to the article, I'll include a link back to your site.

Get the book--99 Painless Ways to Save Serious Money!]]> http://www.doughroller.net/make-money-blogging/50-ways-make-money-blogging/feed/ 51 http://www.doughroller.net/make-money-blogging/seo-copywriting/ http://www.doughroller.net/make-money-blogging/seo-copywriting/#comments Sun, 20 Jul 2008 10:34:53 +0000 DR http://www.doughroller.net/?p=983 SEO copywriting is the art and science of writing articles that rank well in search engines for the keyword phrase you are targeting. It's a science in that search engines use complex algorithms to rank the search results when a web surfer types in a keyword phrase. While search engines like Google do not publicize their ranking formulas, trial and error allows us to have a very good understanding of how these algorithms work.

SEO copywriting is an art in that the article must read exquisitely for the human reader, too, not just Google's complex mathematical formulas. In this article, we will examine the elements of effective search engine optimization copywriting. And we will use this article as our SEO template.

SEO Copywriting Step By Step

SEO copywriting is just one aspect of a holistic approach to search engine rankings. Even the most optimized blog article will be banished to the back pages of Google if it is not part of a well optimized site. Of course, with enough backlinks from the right authority sites, even a poorly written article in a poorly optimized site can obtain a #1 ranking. But hoping for such backlinks is not realistic. So make sure you have a well optimized blog or website. With that in place, we can turn to the steps to follow to write well optimized copy.

Always Pick a Target

Picking a keyword phrase to target with your article is the most important step. If you want your post to rank well in search results, you must know what you want it to rank well for. Picking the right keywords is a separate topic that itself could fill many articles. But the key for today is that you must pick a primary keyword, and you should pick a secondary keyword. Any guess what the primary keyword is for this article about SEO copywriting?

Use your keyword in the article's title

If you take nothing else from this article, remember to use your keyword in the title. And it is preferable to have the keyword at the start of the title. Not only do search engines use the title tag to understand what an article is about, but others linking to your article often use the title in the anchor text. Furthermore, web searchers are more likely to click on your article if its title includes one or more of their search keywords.

SEO aside, however, your title should compel people to read your article. And there are plenty of articles on how to write attention grabbing titles.

Use your keyword in the article's URL

In addition to the title tag, it is best to use your keywords in the URL. For WordPress, if you use a custom permalink that includes the post's title, than the title of the post will be in the URL. My permalink structure is /%category%/%postname%/, so my typical URL looks like the following: www.doughroller.net/category/postname. Having your keywords in the URL is not the most important aspect of SEO copywriting, but it helps and it encourages readers to click on your article when they find it in the SERPs (search engine result page).

Also remember that you can change the URL of a post so that it is different from the post title. You will notice that the URL of this article ends in "seo-copywriting", which is different than the post title. This can be changed just below the title box in WordPress when you are writing or editing the post.

Use your keyword in the first paragraph

Prominence of keywords is one factor in the SEO equation. Generally speaking, we put the more important parts of an article first. The title should describe the whole article. The first paragraph should summarize the article. The first sentence in a paragraph is generally the topic sentence, and so on. Placing the targeted keyword in the firs paragraph identifies the keyword to search engines as an important part of the article.

Boldface the keyword once

Using the "strong" html tag, boldface the keyword phrase once in the article. This is a good practice from the reader's standpoint, and it further identifies the keyword as important to search engines.

Use the keyword phrase 3 or 4 times in the article

The importance of keyword density (how many times the keyword in used in relation to the total words in the article) is a matter of diverse opinion. In my experience, a higher keyword density is important for some search engines (e.g., Yahoo! and MSN), but can actually hurt rankings if overdone in other search engines (e.g., Google). In a typical article of 300 to 500 words, I tend to use the targeted keyword 3 to 4 times, with emphasis on how the article reads over SEO copywriting.

Use the keyword in an alt tag of an image

Ideally, it's best to include an image in each article that uses the keyword in the image's alt tag. I've found over time that image searches in Google can generate significant traffic. To take the image to the next level, overlay text on the image that relates to the subject of the article. This does not impact rankings as the text is part of the image, but it does increase the likelihood that a web surfer will click on the image.

Use the keyword in one h2 tag and h3 tags

In most WordPress themes, the h1 tag is defined in the header, not in the article. In the header, it is often best to define the h1 tag to include the article's title. If you've written an optimized title that includes your targeted keywords, than your h1 tag will include the keywords automatically. In addition, I generally include my keyword in one h2 heading tag and variations of the keyword in multiple h3 tags.

Include external links to quality sites with related anchor text

Linking to external sites that have related content is great for readers and improves your relationship with other bloggers. If the site allows trackbacks, it also generates a link back to your article with the title of your article as the anchor text. The anchor text you use is important both to the site you are linking to, as well as the SEO of your own article. The link text is just one additional factor a search engine can use to understand the topic of your article.

For example, this article is about SEO copywriting, but of course you have to decide on a topic to write about before you can turn to optimization. So if you are suffering from writer's block, here are 30 Ways to Overcome Writer's Block for Bloggers. That article is relevant to the topic of this article, and I've linked to it with relevant keywords. Blogthority is also a great site about blogging.

Use internal links to relevant pages on your site

Internal links in EVERY post are critical to your overall blog optimization. The key point to remember is that you should not limit internal links to other posts. Linking to the home page or the category page that contains the article improves navigation and further supports the siloing or theming architecture. Internal linking improves the SEO of a site, which in turn can go a long way toward making money blogging.

Final Thoughts

SEO is a lot of work. After reading this article, you may have concluded that SEO copywriting is just too much work. For some it is, it just depends on your goals. But whether you are a realtor trying to drive potential home buyers and sellers to your site, a church trying to promote your website, or a blogger trying to promote an affiliate product, even minimal effort toward optimizing your site and your posts can go a long way.

SEO best practices change over time as the search algorithms change. What worked yesterday no longer works today (or as well), and what works today will change tomorrow. The good news is that this change creates opportunities. If you look at my older posts, you'll see that I made no effort to optimize my posts. I had never heard of SEO when I started this site in May 2007. But I am slowly going back to my more important posts and editing them to improve their search rankings. It is a lot of work, but it is paying off.

Finally, recognize that nobody writing about SEO knows everything there is to know about SEO. Even the self-proclaimed experts don't know it all. There is always more to learn, and to harken back to Plato's Allegory of the Cave, in the end all we can really see are the shadows cast by the ever changing, never sleeping search engines.

Get the book--99 Painless Ways to Save Serious Money!]]> http://www.doughroller.net/make-money-blogging/seo-copywriting/feed/ 9 http://www.doughroller.net/make-money-blogging/optimized-wordpress-blog/ http://www.doughroller.net/make-money-blogging/optimized-wordpress-blog/#comments Sat, 05 Jul 2008 23:05:24 +0000 DR http://www.doughroller.net/?p=966 Building an optimized WordPress blog is a critical step to making money online. Whether you intend to build a mini site focused on a narrow topic, an authority blog that covers a broad range of subjects, or a site to promote your small business, creating a site architecture that search engines will love is a must.

Having set up a WordPress blog, building an optimized WordPress blog with solid content is simple, and it involves using what is called the silo or theme architecture. And to best demonstrate this, we'll look at what has recently been called "keyword sniping."

Optimized WordPress Blog -- The Building Blocks

The concept of building a mini site around a single topic or keyword has been around for a long time. The idea is to focus an entire site around one keyword with the goal of ranking #1 on Google for that keyword. With a #1 ranking, you can then make money from the site through affiliate sales or Adsense. Recently, Court's Internet Marketing School has run a great series on how to build these sites, which he calls keyword sniping.

The concept of keyword sniping is straightforward. Build a site with about 10 to 20 articles, all focused on the same topic. Each article includes a single link back to the homepage of the site using the keyword phrase as its anchor text. For example, one could build a site about "online identity theft." Each article published on the site would include one link to the home page with "online identity theft" or close variations as the anchor text.

Of course there is more to building a mini site. You should chose a domain name that includes your keywords. You want to make sure that the h1 tags on every page include the relevant keywords. And you have to get backlinks to your site with the keywords in the anchor text. But from a site architecture perspective, the strategy is simple--include links on all pages that point to your homepage using relevant anchor text. I've used this technique to build small niche sites that started making money right from the start.

The power of keyword sniping, however, is in seeing its potential as a building block to even bigger and better things. It's use is not limited just to building mini sites. In fact, I use the concept right here on The Dough Roller. And that brings us to the silo architecture for blogs and our topic today.

WordPress Silo Architecure

When I first started blogging, I hated WordPress categories. Many blogs would list literally 50+ categories in the sidebar with category names that didn't fit into any cohesive theme. And navigating to the category page showed a not so helpful reverse chronological listing of articles. To me it seemed like a suboptimal way to organize articles. As a result, I paid little attention to the categories I used, and didn't even display links to the categories on my home page. Big mistake.

It turns out that categories are a very important part of the architecture of a WordPress blog. And you can think of each category as a mini site. Using the keyword sniping concept, each post within a category should link back to the category page with the relevant anchor text for that category. Over time, you will have many posts pointing to your category page with highly optimized anchor text.

The same thing should be done from each article to your home page. For example, if your site is about real estate investing (shameless plug), then you would link from each article to the home page using the anchor text "real estate investing" or some close variation (e.g., real estate investment, investing in real estate, etc.).

To create an optimized WordPress blog using the silo architecture, there are certain internal linking rules to follow:

1. Each article should be organized under one and only one category.
2. Each article should link once to the category page it's organized under using the category page's targeted keyword as the anchor text.
3. Each article should link once to the home page using the site's targeted keyword as the anchor text.
4. Each article should link to other articles within the same category as appropriate for the content of the article.
5. Each article should NOT link to articles in other categories. Instead, link to the other category page as appropriate. If you must link to an article in another category, use the rel="nofollow" in the link. This tells most search engines not to pass page rank to the linked article and helps maintain the theme architecture.

The silo architecture is, in my view, great not only for search engines but also for people visiting your site. It organizes the content of your site in a logical and user-friendly manner. It improves navigation of your site. And it will improve your search engine traffic. You can find other helpful articles on this topic, such as Silo Structure SEO and WordPress, WordPress SEO Tip: Implementing the Power of Theming and Siloing ..., and WordPress SEO - Definitive Guide To High Rankings For Your Blog.

Now if you're like me, you still have the problem of unhelpful category pages. If you look at my money management page, for example, you'll see a typical WordPress category page showing excerpts of the articles in reverse chronological order. But compare that page to my credit card category page. You'll see that I've customized that page to make it, in my view, far more user friendly. It includes an opening paragraph describing the category, links to the WordPress pages that contain credit card offers, and then a listing of credit card articles.

How did I do that? Stay tuned. . . .

Get the book--99 Painless Ways to Save Serious Money!]]> http://www.doughroller.net/make-money-blogging/optimized-wordpress-blog/feed/ 9 http://www.doughroller.net/make-money-blogging/tutorialhow-start-money-making-blog/ http://www.doughroller.net/make-money-blogging/tutorialhow-start-money-making-blog/#comments Sun, 29 Jun 2008 12:13:30 +0000 DR http://www.doughroller.net/?p=955 I've just finished a lengthy tutorial on how to start a money making WordPress blog. The article incorporates content from three previous posts (Make Money Blogging–Setting Up a WordPress Blog in 3 Easy Steps, How to Optimize a WordPress Theme for Search Engines, and 5 Must Have WordPress SEO Plugins for a Money Making Blog) and adds new content. The new content covers important non-seo plugins every WordPress blog should have, adding Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tools, and FeedBurner to your site, two key WordPress configurations you should make after installing WordPress, and how to get indexed by Google quickly.

I've put all of this together in one long article so that you have all of the information in one place. I've also organized it as part of an articles page of this site were I'll add future tutorials on a variety of topics.

One final note about this tutorial. You can use WordPress to create sites for a lot more than to make money blogging. A realtor looking to rank well in search engines for his or her location could follow this tutorial to set up a site. A solo attorney or accountant wanting to market their practice online could use WordPress. Perhaps you own a small business and want to tap into Internet marketing--WordPress would be ideal. The point is that WordPress is not just a blogging platform, it's a content management system that you can use for a host of different applications.

So check out my tutorial on how to set up a money making wordpress site, and leave a comment or send an email if you have any questions.

Get the book--99 Painless Ways to Save Serious Money!]]> http://www.doughroller.net/make-money-blogging/tutorialhow-start-money-making-blog/feed/ 13 http://www.doughroller.net/make-money-blogging/wordpress-seo-plugins-money-making-blog/ http://www.doughroller.net/make-money-blogging/wordpress-seo-plugins-money-making-blog/#comments Sat, 14 Jun 2008 23:18:53 +0000 DR http://www.doughroller.net/?p=921 Installing and properly using the right SEO WordPress plugins is critical to getting a money making blog up and running. You can choose and host the best domain name, and you can install an SEO optimized theme, but without the right plugins, you are greatly limiting the money making potential of your blog. So in this article, I'm going to discuss the 5 SEO plugins I use, and then walk through how to upload them to Bluehost

Before I get to the SEO plugins, a quick story. On May 1st I started two related niche blogs using the techniques I describe in the money making blog section of the Dough Roller. One site has 8 articles, the other has 6. They are both finance related and focus on different keywords within the same vertical market. I've not spent a lot of time with the sites, but I have gotten some back links to both. In that time I've made about $120, roughly half from adsense and half from affiliate links.

Now that's not a lot of money, but it's just two sites not even two months old with a combined total of less than 15 articles. I also suspect that within 6 months, these sites will be generating at least $500 per month, and maybe more. And imagine if I had 20 or 30 of these sites (I'm working on it!). In two weeks when we get to the topic of actually building niche sites, I will walk through the process in detail using my site Credit Card Offers IQ as an example.

5 Critical SEO Plugins for a Money Making Blog

As with many things in life, folks can disagree over which SEO plugins are the best. But here is the list of plugins I use, and they have served me very well.

Google XML Sitemaps: Sitemaps tell search engines like Google and Yahoo! what pages are available on your site for crawling. They give search engines a road map to your most important content. With the Google XML Sitemap plugin, generating a XML-compliant sitemap is a snap.

After you download the sitemap plugin, upload it to your site's server (see below), and activate the plugin from the plugins page of your WordPress installation, you can configure the plugin from the "Settings" page of WordPress. This plugin is rich with features and resources. I've found that the default settings typically are all that you need. Once you've generated your sitemap, it will be accessible at http://www.[yourdomain]/sitemap.xml. At that point, you can upload your sitemap to Google's Webmaster tools. Google's Webmaster tools provides a rich set of information about your site, and we'll cover it in more detail next week.

All in One SEO Pack: The All in One SEO plugin works to optimize many features of your site for search engines. Once you install and activate the plugin, there are two things to look for from this plugin. First, it allows you to set global SEO settings for your site. From the Settings page you'll see a tab for the All in One SEO plugin. This screen lets you set things like the home title of your site (if you want something different than your blog name), a meta description for your home page, keywords for your site, and the post title format your readers will see in the top bar of the browser when viewing a post.

Second, you'll see an additional feature added to your write post screen that looks like this:

As the image shows, this plugin allows you to ad title, description, keywords and other information to each post. Much of this information is not necessary to use. For example, if you complete the excerpt box in a post, you won't need to ad a description in the All in One SEO plugin. The same is true for keywards if you are running the current version of WordPress and use tags. But you can alter the meta title of the post, which I often do.

I've introduced you to the All in One SEO plugin because it's effective and easy to use. If you are looking for a simple SEO plugin, I highly recommend it. But in my opinion, it's not the best. If you want the best and are willing to invest some time to understand the benefits of a more sophisticated SEO plugin, then keep reading.

HeadSpace2: The functionality of HeadSpace2 could fill 10 articles. It does everything All in One SEO does and more, and gives you more control of the settings. For example, you can set a single page or post to use a WordPress theme other than the one you've selected for your site. You can set global meta keywords that get inserted into all of your site's pages. You can insert your Google Analytics (more on this next week) id into HeadSpace2 to track your site's traffic.

I highly recommend this plugin if you have the time to understand how to use it. If you do, you should read the HeadSpace2 plugin page. In addition, WebHelperMagazine has published two great posts that you can read here1 and here2.

I do want to highlight one feature of HeadSpace2 that is particularly helpful if you already have a WordPress site with lots of posts. From the Manage tab click on the Meta-data sub-tab. This brings up a screen that lists every post and page on your site. Here's what the screen looks like (click image to enlarge):

This feature allows you to edit or add meta tags/keywords, titles, descriptions, more text, page slug, site name, and site description. The drop down box lets you chose which one of the meta tags to change. If you click on the green arrows to the right, HeadSpace2 inserts suggested keywords and descriptions. One great benefit to this screen is that it's an easy way to find old posts where I've forgotten to add keywords, tags, or meta titles.

Related Posts: This plugin automatically inserts related posts at the end of each post. This gives your readers some additional articles related to the topic if they want to keep reading. But the plugin also has a big SEO benefit. Internal links, that is links from one part of your site to another, are absolutely critical for SEO purposes. I'll even go so far as to say that they are more important than back links. And the related posts plugin ads relevant internal links to all of your posts.

SEO Slugs: In older versions of Wordpress, the write post and page screens included a SLUG input field. This field was automatically populated with the post or page title to create the page URL. SEO Slugs plugin removes from the SLUG common words such as a, an, and the to improve the SEO benefits of the URL. In the current version of WordPress, you'll find no mention of the SLUG. Instead, you'll see a Permalink line immediately below the title. SEO Slugs works the same way for both new and older versions of WoredPress.

Are there other SEO plugins? Yes, tons of them. But the above 5 are the primary ones I use, and they cover just about everything you'll ever need.

How to Install WordPress Plugins with Bluehost

Installing a WordPress plugin is similar to installing a theme:

Step 1: Download the plugin to your hard drive.

Step 2: Log in to Bluehost (or other hosting service) and from the cPanel, select the File Manager. Navigate to your domain folder --> wp-content --> plugins.

Step 3: Once you are in your plugins folder, click the upload navigation icon. This will take you to a screen where you can browse your hard drive and upload the plugin file.

Step 4: Find the plugin file in your plugins folder and extract the files.

Step 5: In WordPress, navigate to the Plugins page and activate the plugin.

There are two shortcuts to this process you should know about. First, when I set up a new site, I quickly copy all of the plugins I use from one of my existing sites on Bluehost to the new site. In File Manager, you can select multiple files and then select the Copy icon to copy the files over to the plugin folder of the new site. It literally takes me 60 seconds to upload all the plugins I need for a new site.

Second, you can use FTP (file transfer protocol) software and other methods to transfer files from your hard drive to the Bluehost servers without manually logging in to Bluehost. I've not covered that here because I think it's important to understand how your hosting interface works. But eventually you'll move to FTP.

Next week I'll cover certain WordPress configurations you'll need to make to your new site and some additional third-party tools you'll want to use. With that, we will have covered everything we need to get a site up and running, and can then turn to actually making money online.

Get the book--99 Painless Ways to Save Serious Money!]]> http://www.doughroller.net/make-money-blogging/wordpress-seo-plugins-money-making-blog/feed/ 11 http://www.doughroller.net/make-money-blogging/find-install-seo-optimized-wordpress-theme/ http://www.doughroller.net/make-money-blogging/find-install-seo-optimized-wordpress-theme/#comments Sun, 08 Jun 2008 18:42:44 +0000 DR http://www.doughroller.net/?p=910 An SEO optimized WordPress theme is a critical component if you want to make money blogging. When I started the Dough Roller in May 2007, I focused exclusively on what a theme looked like. At the time I didn't know how to modify the look of a WordPress theme, and I knew nothing (literally) about search engine optimization. In fact, I had never heard of SEO! If I only knew then what I know now.

Last week we covered how to pick a domain name and install WordPress. If you care at all about search engine rankings and want to make money blogging, there is no reason not to implement a well optimized WordPress theme. So today I'm going to discuss the things I look for in a well optimized theme. I'll also show you some free WordPress themes that are what I call SEO compliant. And then I'll walk through how to upload a theme to your server and activate it in WordPress. We have a lot to cover, so let's get started.

How to optimize a WordPress theme for search engines

Rather than give you some grand theory about SEO, I thought the best way to introduce this subject is to walk through some of the SEO elements I look for when evaluating a WordPress theme. So here they are:

SEO optimized h1 tags: WordPress and the blogging world use lots of tags. You have the WordPress tags you can enter for each post, there's technorati tags, and there are html tags such as h1, h2, h3 and so on. I'm talking about html tags, which serve at least two purposes.

First, html tags when styled with cascading style sheets (CSS) define how the text between html tags will look. You can define for yourself what your html tags will look like, including font size and color.

Second, and important for our purposes, html tags communicate to search engines the relative importance of the text on your page. The h1 tag conveys the most significance and should be used once and only once on each page of your site. The h1 tag typically appears in the header.php file of a WordPress theme because most themes mark the name of the blog with the h1 tag. (if you're new to WordPress, click on Design-->Theme Editor-->Header.php, which you should find along the right hand side of the window containing your theme's php code.) Here's an example of code you'll find in many WordPress theme header files:

---

<h1><a href="<?php echo get_settings('home'); ?>/" 
title="<?php loginfo('name'); ?></">
<?php bloginfo('name'); ?></a></h1>

---

Note: Ignore the line breaks; they are necessary to properly display html and php code.

The above code does two things. First, it displays the name of your site as entered in the Settings of WordPress (Settings-->General). Second, it links the name to your home page, which is why clicking on the name of most blogs takes you back to the home page. Recall that last week we discussed the advantages of having your keywords in your domain name. If you do, then surrounding your blog's name in an h1 tag is a good SEO start. For the Dough Roller, however, my keywords aren't in my domain name, so I've modified my header file with the following code:

---

1 2 3 4 5

<div id="headliner"> <h1>Smarter Money Management <?php if ( is_single() ) { ?> | <?php the_title(); ?><?php } ?> <?php if ( is_page() ) { ?> | <?php the_title(); ?><?php } ?> </h1></div>

---

As with the code above, ignore the line breaks, which I've added to make the code more readable. Also, I've added the line numbers so we can break down this code easier. So here's what this code does:

Line 1: The "headliner" id comes from the Stylesheet file (CSS) and defines how the text will appear (font, size, color, etc.).

Line 2: Opens the h1 tag so that everything following it until the closing /h1 tag is identified by search engines as very important. Following the h1 tag, I've added the keywords that are important to my site. Actually, I should probably move the word "smarter" to the left of the h1 tag since I'm really focused on "money management." In fact, I'll make that change soon. On the home page, "smarter money management" is the only text within h1 tags.

Line 3: When a single post is being displayed (in contrast to the home page, category page, and so on), the title of the post will be added to the h1 tag. If I've written my title to include keywords as I should, then adding them to the h1 tag will help with SEO.

Line 4: This does the same thing as line 2, except for WordPress pages.

Line 5: This line closes the h1 tag and the div.

Now, I'm not suggesting that this is the only or even best approach. I first learned it from Court's Internet Marketing School, a site I'll talk about and link to in a minute. Alternatively, for single post pages you might put the category and post title in the h1 tags. The key is that you want your top keywords in the h1 tag. And in my opinion, you don't want the same h1 tag for every page of your site, although there are good exceptions to this rule.

SEO Optimized h2 and h3 tags: Unlike an h1 tag, it's ok to have more than one h2 and h3 tags on the same page. The key problem I see with many WordPress themes is that they use the h2 tag to mark the headings in sidebars. The result is that Google thinks the words "popular posts," "categories," "blogroll," and the like are really important keywords to your site. So if your theme uses h2 tags for the sidebar headers, change them to h3 tags. You may need to make changes to your Stylesheet file to change the way the h3 tags look; that will just depend on your theme and what look you're after. I tend to reserve h2 tags for keyword rich headings in my posts.

Changing the sidebar tags from h2 to h3 is easy. Simply open the php file(s) in your theme editor that contain the sidebar code, and look for the headings that appear in your sidebar. You should see them surrounded by an h2 or h3 tag, most likely. If it's an h2 tag, simply change it to h3.

Loading content before sidebars improves SEO: This is a simple one, and it amazes me that WordPress theme designers get this one wrong. You want your articles to load before your sidebar. Why? Two reasons. First, you do not want readers surfing away from your site because they got tired of waiting for the content why your sidebar loads. Sidebars often contain ads and javascript that can take some time to load. Second, search engines generally give more weight to the content higher up on the page. So why tell the search engines that your blogroll is more important than your articles?

So how do you tell whether your content loads before your sidebar? You can load a page of your site in a browser, go to the "view" menu and click on page source (in Firefox, please don't tell me you use IE). Look at the html code that comes up and see if your post content is above or below your sidebar content. You can also look at the "Single Post" theme file and see which comes first, php the_content() or the code that calls your sidebar(s).

Remember that the location of your sidebar has absolutely nothing to do with whether it loads first. The sidebar can be to the left of your content and still load in the browser after the content is loaded. If you find that your sidebar loads first, you'll need to move the code that calls the sidebar to come after the code that loads the content.

Using excerpts to avoid duplicate content: Google hates duplicate content. And unfortunately, a WordPress blog can have tons of duplicate content. For example, a single post can show up on the home page, the single post page, multiple category and tag pages, an author page, and an archive page. There are several ways to address this problem. One is to use a robots.txt file to keep Google and other search engine bots from indexing all of these pages. But I prefer a different approach, which is to just show an excerpt of the article on all of these pages (except for the single post page, of course).

The problem is that many themes aren't built that way. The Grid Focus theme I use for the Dough Roller, for example, doesn't even come with a category.php file. So when a user clicks on a category like credit cards, what theme file displays the content? If the theme doesn't have a specific file to deal with the category view, it simply uses the index.php file. In my case, that currently displays the entire post, so the category page also displays the entire post. As I wrote this article, however, I fixed this problem in literally about 60 seconds. I'll show you how, and you can then apply this fix to other pages such as tags and archives if you want to.

In Bluehost (or whatever hosting service you use), go to the file manager. You can refer to my post last week on how to install WordPress if you are unsure how to do this. In file manager, navigate to your theme files, which you find in wp-content-->themes-->[name of theme you are using]. With Grid Focus, my theme files look like this:

Find the index.php file, highlight, and select the "copy" button toward the top left of the screen. When you copy the file, name it "category.php". This is important, because WordPress searches for this file when a user navigates to one of your categories. Once you've copied the index.php file and renamed it category.php, it will show up in the theme editor of WordPress.

Cautionary Note: You should not modify the production environment of your site, particularly without first making sure you have EVERYTHING backed up. Confession: I modify the production code of my sites all the time, but it's a really, really bad idea.

Now from WordPress go into the new category.php file you've created (which currently is identical to your index.php file), and search for the following code:

 
<?php the_content('Read the rest'); ?>

Your code may or may not have the "Read the rest" in the parenthetical. (The text in the parenthetical is displayed if you insert the "more" command in a post.) You'll then replace the portion of this code that reads "the_content('Read the rest')" with "the_excerpt()". Save the file and you're done. Now your category pages will all show excerpts of the posts rather than the full posts. Not only is this better for SEO, but I think users prefer this approach, too.

One last thing. When you write a post, one of the boxes within WordPress is for excerpts. if you fill in this box, the content will be displayed whenever the excerpt of the post is displayed. If you leave this box blank, WordPress instead shows the first four lines or so of the post. It's really a good idea to complete the excerpt box for each post, but I'm guilty of neglecting this step.

Links in the theme's footer are critical to search engine optimization: When I first started blogging, I didn't give much thought to the footer. I figured nobody ever read the content in the footer anyway, so why bother. It turns out, adding the right links to the footer can be a big SEO plus. We'll talk more about that in the weeks to come, but for today, the important point is to note what links the theme author requires you to leave in the footer. What you want to avoid are themes that come with 3 or 4 links in the footer, including paid links to spam sites. One link back to the author's page is fine, much more than that and look for another theme.

And this brings us to the next topic. . . .

Free SEO WordPress Themes

The thought of significantly modifying a WordPress theme may not be your idea of a fun time. In addition, you may just want to start off with a well optimized theme to save time. Fortunately, there is a great resource that offers free optimized Wordpress themes. Court's internet marketing school is a great resource if you want to make money blogging.

One of the things Court has done to promote his site is to create WordPress themes optimized for search engines. And in addition to offering these themes for free, he also offers a great lesson in internet marketing. Question: Why is Court going to all this trouble to build themes and then give them away for free? Is he just a great guy? Well, I'm sure he is a great guy, but there is some self interest involved. Each theme includes a link in the footer back to his site. So every time somebody uses one of his themes, he gets a free link. He has even purchased themes, modified them as necessary to improve search engine optimization, and then made them available for free. In fact, one of the themes he now owns is the one used by JD at Get Rich Slowly.

So if you are looking for a well optimized WordPress theme, check out what Court has to offer.

How to install a WordPress theme

For those just starting out, let me quickly walk through how to install a WordPress theme. I'll use Bluehost in the example, but the process is generally the same for any hosting service.

Step 1: Select your theme and download the zip file to your hard drive.

Step 2: Log into Bluehost and open up the File Manager.

Step 3: In the File Manager, navigate to the WP-content-->Themes folder.

Step 4: Once you're in the theme folder, click on the "Upload" button toward the top left of your screen:

Step 5: From the upload screen, select the "browse" button and find the theme zip file you downloaded to your hard drive. Once selected, Bluehost will automatically upload the file into your theme folder.

Step 6: Go back to your theme folder and find the zip file you just downloaded (you may need to refresh the screen). Check the box next to the zip file and select the "Extract" button near the top right of your screen:

Follow the prompts to confirm the action, and you're done. Now when you go into your site's WordPress Design-->Theme, you should see your new theme as an option. Simply select it by clicking on it, and you're ready to go.

I know this has been a long post. My goal is to walk through these steps in as much detail as possible. But remember, once you've got this down, you will be able to buy a domain, get it hosted, install WordPress and a theme, install necessary plugins, and configure Wordpress all in about 15 to 20 minutes. So our next step in the process is to install some critical SEO plugins and to configure some of the WordPress settings that will help in the search engine rankings. We'll cover these topics next week.

Get the book--99 Painless Ways to Save Serious Money!]]> http://www.doughroller.net/make-money-blogging/find-install-seo-optimized-wordpress-theme/feed/ 12 http://www.doughroller.net/make-money-blogging/money-blogginghow-install-wordpress/ http://www.doughroller.net/make-money-blogging/money-blogginghow-install-wordpress/#comments Sun, 01 Jun 2008 13:02:10 +0000 DR http://www.doughroller.net/?p=893 Last week marked the one year anniversary of The Dough Roller! I recall those first 30 days vividly. Before starting this site, I had never heard of WordPress, php, SEO, Digg, affiliate programs or even adsense. In fact, making money blogging wasn't even why I started the Dough Roller. I've come a long way. Recently, several people have asked me to walk them through step by step how to set up a blog using Wordpress, with particular focus on search engine optimization (SEO) and making money. Most recently, the children's pastor at my church asked for some help on a site he wants to establish for children. All of these requests led me to start this Make Money Blogging series. Today's topic is how to set up a WordPress blog.

Setting Up a WordPress Blog in 3 Easy Steps

You need to do three things to set up a Wordpress blog: (1) get a domain name; (2) host it on a server; and (3) install the Wordpress software. (You can set up your site at WordPress.com, but I wouldn't recommend it and won't be covering that option in this series.) So let's cover each step, and by the end of this article, you should be all set to set up your first site:

How to pick a domain name | Blog Hosting | Installing Wordpress

How to pick a domain name

There are a number of factors to consider when picking a domain name. And the first thing you should consider is why you are starting a site in the first place. Do you want to set up a social blog where making money online is just one of many goals? Are you setting up a site solely to generate revenue? Or Are you setting up a site to promote an off line business? There are a lot of different and valid reasons to set up a site, but it's important to know the purpose behind your site when you pick a domain name.

Why? Because you need to decide whether you want the name of your site to appeal more to human readers or to search engines. Obviously some names can appeal to both, but knowing the goal of your site from the beginning will go a long way to picking the right name. With that in mind, here are some of the factors to consider when picking a domain name:

Branding: If you are promoting an off line business, a domain name that matches the name of your company is obviously critical. But even if your business is entirely online, a memorable domain name can help you build reader loyalty and trust. This is the approach I took with the Dough Roller. Exactly how well I accomplished that goal I'll leave to you, but the people I talk to say its catchy and memorable. That's the goal if your focus is branding.

Keyword Rich Domains: Keywords are the word phrases we all type into Google, Yahoo! or other search engines to find information on the Internet. We will be talking a lot about keywords in this series, including how to determine the competitiveness and value of keywords. When we talk about search engine optimization (SEO), we are talking about how well a site ranks in the search engines for a particular keyword. For example, if you type prosper versus lending club in Google, my article entitled Prosper vs. Lending Club SmackDown–Who has the best interest rates? is number one. Now, the rankings can vary from one Google data center to the next (more on that later in the series), but you get the idea.

Now before we can get too excited even about a number one ranking, we need to know how many people search with that given keyword each day. In the case of prosper versus lending club, the answer is not many. In May, I had 138 search visitors to that article, and not all of them found the article using the prosper versus lending club search phrase. The point for today is simply that if your site will be targeting a specific keyword phrase, having keywords in your domain name can help with your site rank will for the targeted keyword.

A keyword rich domain name is the approach I took with Credit Card Offers IQ. As you might imagine, the keyword credit cards is highly competitive and highly valuable, which typically go hand in hand. Credit card offers is not as competitive and not as valuable. Obviously I'll be targeting other keywords on the site, but the domain name contains important keywords and describes what the site is all about. It's also helpful that when somebody searches on the keyword they see that my domain matches closely their keywords. Let me show you what I mean.

Because the site is new, it doesn't rank well for any keywords. Even the name of the site doesn't show up until page two. In fact, search on the term credit card offers iq and The Dough Roller ranks higher than Credit Card Offers IQ! I won't go into why here, but let me show you the Google search result where Credit Card Offers IQ is listed (which is the top of page 2):

Now nobody is going to search for the term credit card offers iq. But they will search for credit card offers. While I don't rank for that term yet, I will. In fact, I plan to rank #1. We'll see. The point is, though, that if somebody searches for that term, they'll see those keywords in the domain of my site in the search results listing. Why is that important? It increases the likelihood that they'll visit my site. Ranking well for a keyword is just step one. Step two is getting folks to click on your site within the rankings.

Backlinks: Backlinks are simply links from other sites that point to your site. And they are the lifeblood of the Internet and SEO. Each link to your site is a vote of confidence in the eyes of Google (well, most links to your site are a vote of confidence, but we'll get to that later in the series). Determining the value of a backlink will be an entire article in this series, but for now, remember that one of the factors in determining value is the anchor text. The anchor text is the text you click on to go to the site being linked to. For example, you'll see that I've linked to Credit Card Offers IQ. Here, the anchor text is credit card offers iq. The anchor text is important for SEO purposes because it tells the search engines what the site or page is about that is being linked to.

I hope you are now seeing the value of a keyword rich domain name. Guess what anchor text people most often use when linking to the Dough Roller. And the funny thing is that if you search for dough roller in Google, I rank #2. The Dough Roller restaurant ranks #1! As a regular visitor to Ocean City, Maryland where The Dough Roller restaurant is located, I'm happy to cede it the #1 ranking.

Anyway, with a keyword rich domain name, you are more likely to get your keywords as the anchor text in links to your site. This is a HUGE plus for SEO.

Top Level Domains: Does it matter if your site ends with .com, .net, .org, or some other TLD? Yes and no. Domain names with .com extensions are more valuable than other TLDs. It's as simple as that. In addition, most folks assume that a website is a .com, so they can have trouble finding your site if it ends with a different extension. I have no doubt that some have had trouble finding the Dough Roller because it ends in .net. I think that's why I get a handful of visitors each day who find through the search term the dough roller.

From an SEO perspective, it doesn't matter. I've seen nothing suggesting, for example, that the search engines favor one TLD over another. So my view is to get the .com if you can. But if you find a great keyword rich .net or .org, grab it.

Should you buy a domain name? I've never bought a domain name, but I expect that I will shortly. Cost is the obvious downside. To register a new domain costs $10. Buying a domain name will cost more, and a lot more depending on the value of the name. One of the key benefits of buying an existing domain is its age.

When I started The Dough Roller, I got almost no search engine visitors to speak of. Part of the reason was that I didn't know what I was doing. But another part was that I had a brand new domain. At the six month mark, after my domain name had age, I saw a noticeable spike in search engine hits. Many have reported the same thing at around the six month mark. We won't go into what is called the Google sandbox at the moment, but the point is that the age of a domain is an important SEO factor.

Availability: So you have a great domain name in mind and want to know if it's available. There are a million places on the net to find out if a domain name is available. I use GoDaddy. It's easy to use and will give you alternative suggestions if the name is not available. You should expect to try a lot of domain names before you find one that you like and that is available. I'll repeat this many times, but remember, this is not rocket science, but it does take a lot of hard work and perseverance. If you are not prepared to work at it, forget about making money blogging.

How to pick a domain name | Blog Hosting | Installing Wordpress

Hosting your site

There are many hosting services to choose from. And if you ask five bloggers which is the best, you'll get five different answers. You'll also hear horror stories about every single hosting company out there. I use three hosting services: Bluehost, Dreamhost and Proud Domains. Why do I use three, you ask. Absolutely no good reason. Of these, Bluehost is my top pick for one primary reason--tech support.

I can reach a live tech support person at Bluehost inside of 60 seconds almost every time. At Dreamhost, I was told that live tech support doesn't come with their basic package. Their hosting is fine, but without live tech support, forget it. So throughout this series I'll be using Bluehost in my examples. Most hosting services work pretty much the same way, but the user interfaces are different.

You can get Bluehost for as little as $6.95 a month and can host an unlimited number of domains for that price. I currently have about 20 or so sites hosted with Bluehost. if you'd like to sign up with Bluehost, you can by
clicking here. And if you're just starting out, the Bluehost package comes with a free domain name.

I purchase my domains directly through Bluehost. It's easy, costs $10, and I can have the site up and running in minutes. Assuming you already have a Bluehost account, here's what you do. After you log in to Bluehost, it will take you to what's called the cPanel, which looks like this:

During the signup process with Bluehost, they will walk you through registering your first domain. To purchase another domain name once you've already signed up with Bluehost, in the cPanel scroll down to the Domains panel, which looks like this:

In this panel, select "register domain." This will take you to an easy to follow set of screens to enter the domain name you want and register it through Bluehost. Now comes the part that trips some folks up. Registering the domain and hosting the domain are two entirely different processes. You've registered the domain, but now you have to host it. Bluehost calls this an "addon" domain, and it's easy to do.

From the cPanel, go back down to the Domains panel and select the Domain Manager. This will take you to a listing of all of your registered domains on Bluehost. Mine looks like this:

Of course, I'm just showing you a couple of my domains. But you'll see that two of them are "unassigned" and one is "parked." Don't worry about parking domains for the moment. I redirect that site to the Dough Roller. If you want to host a domain name you've just registered, find it on your list of domain names and click the "unassigned" link. This will take you to a screen with four steps:

Step #1:

With step one, you want to select the domain name you want to host. In my example, I'm going to host the domain name, smartmoneytools.net.

Steps #2 and 3:

if you've registered your domain name through Bluehost, there's nothing to do with step #2. For step #3, we want to select the addon button. This will enable you to host your new domain name as a separate, stand alone site.

Step #4:

Finally, choose to setup a new directory with the name of your domain. These settings are the default on my system, so all I really need to do on this page is click the "Add Domain" button and I'm done. Note that setting up the hosting after you click the button can take a few minutes, so be patient. Once that's done, you're ready to install WordPress.

How to pick a domain name | Blog Hosting | Installing Wordpress

How to Install WordPress on Bluehost

Installing WordPress takes all of about 60 seconds. From the cPanel, scroll down to the Software/Services panel and click on the Fantastico De Luxe button:

This will take you to the Fantastico page where you can click on the WordPress link in the left sidebar underneath the "Blog" heading. Here's what the WordPress installation page looks like:

From here click the "New Installation" link to go to the WordPress installation page. In the dropdown box at the top, select the domain name where you want to install WordPress. In my example, I'm installing it in the coolmoneytools.net directory:

After that just work down the page inputting primarily the password you want to use and email name. Once you've filled in the required fields, click the "Install WordPress" button and Bluehost takes care of the rest. The next page will allow you to email the installation details to an email address of your choosing. This is very important, as you'll want to save this information.

So that's it. Pick your domain name, host it on Bluehost or some other hosting service, and install WordPress. You'll be up and running inside of 10 minutes. In fact, picking the domain name is the most time consuming part of the process. Once you have that, hosting the domain and installing WordPress should only take a few minutes.

I know this has been a long post, but as I said, I do plan to cover this information in detail. Next week I'll cover choosing a WordPress theme, including the SEO considerations that should go into your decision.

Get the book--99 Painless Ways to Save Serious Money!]]> http://www.doughroller.net/make-money-blogging/money-blogginghow-install-wordpress/feed/ 45 http://www.doughroller.net/make-money-blogging/30-things-i-learned-in-my-first-30-days-of-blogging/ http://www.doughroller.net/make-money-blogging/30-things-i-learned-in-my-first-30-days-of-blogging/#comments Wed, 27 Jun 2007 11:30:16 +0000 DR http://doughroller.net/2007/06/27/30-things-i-learned-in-my-first-30-days-of-blogging/ Thirty days ago I published the first article on The Dough Roller. Entitled Humble Beginnings, I had no idea just how humble the first 30 days of blogging can be. With that in mind, here are 30 things I've learned in my first 30 days of blogging:

1. It turns out, Furl is not something you see at a frat party. You know, as in, "Watch out! Frank is about to furl!"

2. It is impossible to correctly type in the URL for de.lic.ious. Or is it del.ic.io.us? No, that's not right. I think it's deli.cio.us, right? Is it even legal to have that many periods in a URL? If it is, it shouldn't be.

3. With so many free Wordpress themes available, it's easy to find one that is exactly what your looking for. Well, almost exactly what you're looking for. I mean, you can't expect to find absolutely everything you want in a single theme. Ok, none of them seems to be the right fit for me. Help! Of course, maybe the perfect theme is out there, just waiting to be discovered. Let's see. I've looked at about 5,437 of them so far, but I'm determined. Suggestions appreciated.

4. Messing up the html code in a post can screw up all the other posts that follow it on the same page. That's some free advice for you right here at The Dough Roller that only took me about three hours to figure out. I'd accept donations for that advice, but I haven't figured out how to add the donation feature to my blog. Besides, you have better things to do with your money.

5. Hitting the refresh button on sitemeter will not increase the number of visitors to your blog. Neither will hitting the refresh button on Google Analytics, FireStats or any of the other 38 counters I use. But as with Wordpress themes, I'll keep trying.

6. No two site counters actually report the same data, whether its visitors, page views, or whatever. This can come in handy. At first I just assumed the counter with the highest number was correct. When I graduated to advanced blogging in week three, I learned to add all of the counters together to determine the most accurate statistics. That way, the more counters you have, the more visitors you get. Now you know why I have 41 counters.

7. Feedburner. Ah, Feedburner. Do some blogs really have tens of thousands of subscribers??? That can't be, I've only got...[hold on, let me check] 38, which includes my wife, mom, three aunts, a cousin, and five people at work who don't even know they've subscribed.

8. I learned from Darren Rowse of Problogger the importance and value of keywords and outbound links. And if Problogger thinks it's important, it's important. You can't go wrong following the advice of Problogger. Go, Problogger!

9. Carnivals. I have nothing but the upmost respect and admiration for all carnivals and especially all future carnival hosts. You're the greatest, and your blog is better than all the rest. Really.

10. Counting spam, I received 4,573,421 comments in my first month. Not counting spam, 21. Let's hear it for spam!

11. It's possible, if you really try, to have a CTR (click through rate for you newbies) of less than . . . . Well, I can't tell you what my actual CTR is, but let's just say it's very close to the interest rate some credit card companies have been offering lately.

12. The upper lefthand sidebar is the best, most profitable place to put a Google Adsense ad. Or is it the right sidebar? No, maybe it's the upper middle of the first post on the main page above the fold, except on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and every other Friday, when the absolute best place to put the Google Adsense ad is . . . . Hold on, here. I can't give away all me secrets.

13. I don't care about the money. In fact, I may remove all advertising from my blog, just to prove that money means absolutely nothing to me. Wait a minute, The Dough Roller is a personal finance blog. Ok, the ads stay.

14. If you use a Google Adsense plug-in, make sure to put your Adsense id in the code. Otherwise, the plug-in author will get all of your revenue. A whole week went by before I figured that one out. That was a 37 cent lesson I'll not soon forget.

15. For a week [and this is for real], I thought Google Adsense was malfunctioning because I had made $0.00 in revenue each day. I stripped out all the Adsense plug-ins and anything else I could think of that could possibly be the problem. All I was left with was my blog and no revenue. Hmm, I guess I found the problem.

16. I think Amazon is spamming me. I keep getting e-mail from Amazon reminding me that I have yet to generate any revenue through its Affiliates program and offering what I'm sure are very sincere suggestions on how to make my first sale. Keep trying Amazon, I like your spunk.

17. Publishing a post on a blog is like ringing a bell. It can't be un-rung.

18. Photoshop is expensive; Gimp is not.

19. The first, real, substantive comment a blogger receives feels great. Even if the comment tells you what a moron you are.

20. Blogging is like playing golf. It's that one, positive comment each round that keeps you writing.

21. Writing posts that show everybody just how smart I am doesn't generate a lot of positive reaction. I know, its insane, but true.

22. There are some really great personal finance blogs out there giving good, sound advice. That's it, no joke.

23. I'm still at 38 subscribers--I just checked.

24. Success is the hardest thing to foregive. I didn't really appreciate this wisdom until I began following successful blogs.

25. A 2-column theme is superior to a 3-column theme. A 3-column theme is superior to a 4-column theme. And a 4-column theme is superior to a 2-column theme. There, it's settled.

26. Blogging, at the start, is a rather lonely adventure.

27. Writing four posts a day, as it turns out, is quite a lot of work. I think I'll scale back to 2.7 posts per day.

28. I shouldn't quit my day job anytime soon.

29. Coming up with a list of 30 things about anything is a lot harder than you might think.

30.

If you enjoyed this article, will you share-it, furlit, diggit, fluffit, stuffit, trip over it or whatever else you crazy cats and kittens do when you like a post? Oh, and subscribe, too. I'm trying to break 50.

And so you don't feel cheated:

30. Blogging ain't that bad; I think I'll stick with it.

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