Building Your Income with Blogs

Blogs are a fantastic way to make money. They do well in search engines, they’re easy to maintain and promote, and they can give very sticky content. If you post often on your blog , and you excel at what you do, you could actually develop quite a large following of readers who subscribe to your RSS feed and read your content on a daily.

One of the most important secrets to success with blogs is posting in them regularly. If you don’t post regularly, you won’t get much traffic, and people won’t come back for more. Posting frequently also keeps your content fresh, and search engines adore fresh content.

The more often you publish posts, the more frequently the search engine spiders will visit your site. And every time you post, you can must ping your site at the various ping locations. This will also result in more traffic.

Another major key to blog success is creating sticky content. This means you have to write posts that people will actually be interested in reading.

Readers probably don’t care what you had for dinner, unless you’re Celine Dion or you’re running a food blog. They want to read about stuff related to your niche. If you’re running a blog about fishing, at least 75% of your posts should be related to fish. Preferably 110%.

You should talk about recent fishing trips you’ve been on, tournaments you’ve watched, and rods you’ve tried. You might occasionally post about family matters, or your dog, or your favorite restaurant as a way to connect on a more personal level with your readers, but most of your posts should be on target with your niche.

Blogs Are Great for People Who Sell Services

If you’re a graphics designer or writer, having a blog is a good way to keep in touch with your clients. You can offer updates on your schedule and availability, current prices and special offers, and when you’ll be taking some time off.

You can also post samples of your latest work. If you have a number of clients subscribe to your RSS feed, you’ll be able to keep in contact with them so they’ll order from you more often.
People also tend to follow blogs more carefully than websites.

Don’t start a blog with the intention of letting it sit dormant and earn money. It probably won’t work. If you’re going to start a blog, you need to be prepared to commit yourself to growing the blog, posting often, keeping it updated, and not giving up on it.

They offer multiple selling opportunities – from text links woven throughout the content to image ads like banners you strategically place in between blog posts. The sidebar can also be utilized as affiliate or direct sales revenue space.

Important Blog Tip

Make sure your blog is hosted on your own domain instead of a free blog on a blogging community. This makes it more professional to the person who lands on your website and lends credibility to your efforts as the go-to person in your niche.

Share This

What is a Squeeze Page

A squeeze page is a web page that’s used for the purpose of getting people to opt in to your newsletter or mailing list by entering their name and email address. A squeeze page generally doesn’t have as much copy as a sales letter, but most squeeze pages have some teaser text and bullet points.

Increasingly, video is being used in place of text on squeeze pages. Most text-based squeeze pages consist of a headline, a short paragraph or two of copy, a few bullet points, and an opt-in box – all “above the fold,” meaning the reader doesn’t have to scroll to continue reading.

What Tools To Create a Squeeze Page

Some squeeze pages will also have graphics, including a header and footer, and perhaps other graphics such as an eCover for a free report that’s being given away as a reward for opting in.
First, you need to create a basic HTML page.

You can do this using a WYSIWYG editor, which should make it easier for beginners. WYSIWYG stands for “what you see is what you get.” A WYSIWIG HTML editor lets you design visually, and you generally need to know little, if any, HTML to use one.

Squeeze Page Color Schemes and Setup

Many people use a darker red or a medium blue as the background color for their squeeze page, but you can use any color you like, as long as it isn’t incredibly bright and distracting and it looks good with any other graphics you might use on the page.

You don’t want to put your text directly on this colored background, because it will probably be difficult to read. What you want to do is create a table with a white background, and put all of your text and graphics inside the table.

In your program, create a table with a single cell (1×1) and set the background color to white. This table should probably be between 700 and 800 pixels in width. Most people use between 750 and 770 pixels, because it’s large enough to look good on monitors with very high resolutions, yet it still shows up well even at 800 x 600.

Inside this table, you’ll want to put the rest of your squeeze page information. This should include a headline, a little copy, bullet point or a video, and your opt-in box (you’ll get the code for this from your autoresponder).

Graphics

You can also put the eCover of the product you’ll be giving away to subscribers, if you have one. Your headline should be something that will tease visitors and make them really want to sign up to get the information you have.

Headlines

If you’re giving away a 10-page report on the hidden dangers in pet food, your headline might read, “Did you know the food you give your beloved pet could kill him? Read this shocking FREE report about dangerous additives in pet food that could cause your four-legged friend to suffer a slow, agonizing death!”

Copy to get the Sign Up

Next, you need to include some very short teaser copy. Just put in a paragraph or two of text or bullet points that describe the product you’re giving away for free. If you’re using Aweber, you’ll create a list, and then get the code from your admin area.

You’ll need to paste the form into the HTML area. Then you’re finished with your squeeze page! Just save the file, upload it and test it, then start sending traffic to it! You can use this landing page for an AdWords campaign, too – which is beneficial if your business involves a lot of affiliate marketing.

Share This

As usual I waited for the 1st security update to start moving some of my bogs over to WordPress 2.5.

I updated the plugins, backedup the database, the theme files and uploads.

After carefully reading WordPress.org’s upgrade instructions I decided to install the plugin maintenance mode to display a splash saying the blog was undergoing maintenance.

After uploading all the necessary files, I tried to visit the upgrade page http://example.com/wordpress/wp-admin/upgrade.php and guess what the maintenance mode plugin would no longer allow me to access anything except the maintenance splash page.

So if this happens to you the solution is to delete the plugin from your plugin folder.

Now I just have to get used to the new dashboard and layout.

Share This