ChrisKilber.com

Health · Wealth · Freedom in a Modern World

Monetizing your Web Pages

September 10th, 2010

When you set up your blog, it’s time to monetize it. There’s no point in hanging around on this – it should be your highest priority. As soon as you have content on there, you need contextual ads and affiliate ads to ensure you are getting your blog to pay for itself. The positioning of said ads is very important, and there’s many, many books been written about it. Some contradictions are present in this field, but the general consensus is quality over quantity. Google allows you to have three Adsense blocks on your page at once, but do you really need three? If you think it may be overdoing it, then leave one out. If you are using banner ads in your sidebar, and maybe a banner in your post, then leaving out an Adsense block is not going to be a problem. Also, remember that in-line contextual text links like Chitika are also allowed at the same time as Adsense.

If you want the best positioning for your ads, the best thing to do is look how the professionals do it. Websites like Problogger.net and entrepreneurs-journey.com are prime examples of great ad positioning, as they believe in quality over quantity. You will usually find one block of Adsense at the top of the post, one at the bottom (or in the post body) and then a sidebar block displaying just the text link format. This is a great idea, because when people see text links that are related to the content, they click them (usually thinking they are navigation links), because sidebars are reserved for navigation in most cases. Any banners you have in your sidebars should not be too busy. There’s nothing worse than seeing too many flashes and swirls when you are trying to read content. If you are using image ads on Adsense, then ensure you have no large images posted near them. Google is very keen on this, and they don’t like you putting their ads too close to other content. It is a popular mistake to make, too.

Getting the seal of approval

September 8th, 2010

To get the seal of approval from your visitors, there are many ways you can improve your trust ranking with them, and make your blog more user friendly. The first thing to do is publish a picture of yourself, even with your family, on your blog. This allows people to put a face to words, and should be a golden rule. All too often, you will see a website that is clinical and not in the least bit persona; to the author. If you are willing to go out on a limb and show the world your face, then that speaks volumes. Another golden rule is video. You should use multimedia on your site if you can, and learning how to use simple software like Camtasia, or even software like Cam Studio (which is open source), is not too difficult.

Once you have put your face and your voice out there, you may as well go the whole hog and give people your telephone number. This is one of those situations when you may wish you had thought it through a bit better – but adding a telephone number to your site can really make people feel at ease. Whilst they may email you with any questions, or use Skype, they will rarely call you anyway. But giving people that option is awesome, and will reap rewards in the long term. You do not have to be a salesman, just a person.

Besides the above methods, one amazing concept that some bloggers forget about, is a newsletter system. Newsletters enable you to contact the people that are putting money in your pocket, so it is always worthwhile having. You can give people anything for free so that they decide to sign up to your newsletter, just make sure they sign up! One of the oldest sayings in the IM industry is “the money is in the list!”. It is a saying for a reason…

GMail Adwords Campaigns Explained

September 6th, 2010

I’ve seen a few great Pay Per Click methods discussed on forums over the years, and the one that has caught my eye more than most is GMail advertising. You probably didn’t realize, but Adwords has a separate Gmail facility, and you can serve up your ads JUST for the people reading their emails. Whilst there are many users who use POP3 with their Gmail account, the majority still access via web browser, and there are millions of potential targets there for the taking.

On your Campaign Settings page, all you have to do is enable the Content Network and Relevant pages only on the placements I manage which will allow you to activate Gmail as a Network of choice. Simply go to Networks, Managed placements, Show details and to serve ads only on Gmail pages, enter mail.google.com and click Save. It really is that simple. Now all you need to do is work out a strategy for Gmail only targets.

The best way to get into the mindset of your target viewer/reader, is to think like them. You need to sit and think why they may be looking at their email, and viewing an email with your keyword in. For example, if you are in the niche of baby cot mattresses, then you need to think just like the person who is reading the email containing that keyword.

Could they be looking for quotes from people on eBay? Why? Are they looking for cheaper shipping?
Look on Yahoo! Answers for questions about your product – people will certainly be asking manufacturers and retails these questions
What problem do people have in this niche? How can you solve it for them?

Simple questions like this will enable you to build a great campaign, which will pull in the clicking public, and hopefully convert much better than simply keyword stuffing your Adwords campaign.

Free content? Just ask…

September 3rd, 2010

Too many people are afraid to ask for something that they consider as having great value. Whilst it may be valuable to you, it may be something that would take just a few minutes to another person. When you are looking for fresh new content, and you want it for free, then you will need to do some asking. Blog owners that add daily content to their site are already writing content about their niche, and about their blog, so they will not be too bothered about doing another article, just for you, which will link from your site to theirs. A backlink. Yes, that is going to be your bargaining chip, and it will be worth their time in writing your article.

You need to find the blogs that are updated regularly, and you can do this by searching Google for a related search term to your blog, and then ensuring you are limiting to blogs that have been updated in the last few weeks (in the left sidebar on Google search results). Find a good quality blog that has regular and not sporadic content being posted. Three to four times per week is ideal. This suggests that the blogger is a professional, and they value fresh content.

The best way to approach this deal is straight out asking them to write an article on your blog as a guest, and giving them the opportunity to add a backlink right at the end. You can play on the fact that you would rather an informed and professional article on the subject matter than to plagiarize their great work.

You will usually get a few hits per week at this. People are very willing to give up a few minutes of their time to write a 300 word post on something they write about every day. They will probably rehash one of their older posts – which is fine, because its going to be great new content on YOUR blog.

Backlinks on the front page of a blog?

September 1st, 2010

It may seem impossible that a blogger would ever give you the front page of their blog to display your wares, but it is very possible indeed. There are literally thousands of people who realized the power of this method of backlinking benefiting from page one backlinks on sites with Pagerank of 6, 7 etc. It truly is quite easy too. As long as you like writing (you do not have to be the best writer in the world, and typos are allowed!) or have a great outsourcer who is worth their salt.

For a while now, many top bloggers have used a plugin called Top Commentators, which is a widget that sits in the sidebar of a site. It sits on every page, however, so this is immediately powerful for the links that are in that Top Commentators widget. The prerequisite to get into that box is you must be making valid and worthwhile comments on the blog, and you should also be in the post count of the top 10 or 15 people. So if the number 10 spot has 5 posts, you need to write 5 posts that week/month – depending on how the blog operates.

You can use different anchor texts for different blogs. You can put your name, or your website name – the blogs do not care, as long as you are adding valuable and fresh content to their blogs. This is not spam – you are collaborating with the owner of the site – and they welcome you with open arms – and even throw in an awesome backlink to boot.

To find these cool blogs that allow you to advertise on their home page, you simply need to go to Google, and type in the following:

allintext: “Top Commentators” “Powered by WordPress “

This will throw up enough blogs for you to go through, and remember – actually pick blogs you want to comment on!

Fast Indexing Software…

August 30th, 2010

Link building can often become quite a long and laborious process for some of us that may not be so advanced as others with SEO. However, this is not the only thing that needs to be done in order to increase your position on the search engines. Once you have built your links you then need to make them actually start to work for you. This is where indexing comes in. If your links are not indexed, then they are practically worthless to you. There are two good ways to get your links indexed quickly. The first is Meta Indexing and by doing this to all of your links, you can gain hundreds, if not thousands of link backs to your main site/profile etc. The other way is to ping to all of the top RPC ping sites which will inform the search engines such as Google and Yahoo that you have new content out there to be crawled over. You need a proper link strategy in order to do this properly and this can take a long time when done manually. This is why the latest craze of indexing software has come to light. This software claims to be able to speed up this process incredibly, getting your URL’s indexed in under 2 hours for you!

The only reported downside to this software is that it may not be extremely user friendly for anyone other than the experienced internet marketers. However, there are many different kinds of this software available, all doing almost the same job. Therefore, it is simply a matter of discovering the method that works best for you and sticking with it until you have perfected the technique required. This software can be found on many forums such as the Warrior Forum etc. and a lot of these you will find offering free trials too!

Traffic from unlikely places…

August 27th, 2010

A recent trip to the store left me quite bemused and a little angry with myself for not finding a perfectly good marketing method that was so simple, it was laughable. I was so intrigued by the marketer that they got a call from me, whereupon I asked about their reasons for marketing in such a way. How it started was with me picking up a business card that was left on a countertop in a store. On it were the words “Lay-Offs”, “Redundancy”, and “We can help”. Having a friend who had just been laid off, I picked up the card, and when I got back to the house, I looked at it.

The person who had gone ahead with this marketing style told me it was nothing new, and people have been doing it for some time. The reason it works so well right now, is the fact that millions of people have been hit by credit crunches and economic downturns. The actual proposition on the card was to get people enrolled in online marketing coaching, and the owner wasn’t half bad. The entry fee was very low, making it accessible to most people, and that’s why it worked so well. Problem + solution + accessibility for target audience.

When you are considering your next marketing campaign, remember that you are talking to people, and people like to be helped with problems. The first paragraph of every marketing copy that ever worked is about problems and solutions. Begin by addressing a problem that your target audience needs solving, and you will get their attention, and generally retain it throughout the copy. If you are hitting all the right notes with your copy, and can genuinely provide help to people, then you will get buyers – it is that simple. Every testimonial you get should be published, and do not be shy about the work you are doing. Make sure people know what a kick you get out of helping these people.

Facebook Tagging

August 25th, 2010

Facebook, we are all agreed, is awesome. An awesome tool for keeping in touch with your friends, your network, your loved ones who are skiing in Austria, and of cause – awesome for spammers. Yes, we have all had the invites to events that we will never be attending, or the invites to pages that contain matter we would never be interested in… but does any of this put off the experienced, somewhat inexperienced Facebook marketer? I should hope not, because Facebook has an amazing armoury of tools that can help grow your business overnight. I’m speaking this time about Tagging.

Tagging is used by people to get information about a link, page, photo or anything else to another person fast. When you tag somebody on your friends list, they will receive an email. It’s a much more friendly “You were tagged in a photo by John Smith” email subject too. The significance in tagging is not apparent immediately. You have to look a little closer.

Lets say you were a fan of an internet marketing page. You then tag it by inserting @ before the page’s name on your status update, saying “I just posted a pretty in depth review of XYZ website. I’d be interested to know your thoughts! Thanks, Chris.”. What happens next is fairly amazing. Your update will be posted to that page’s wall (eventually) and will go out to however many fans that page has. Fans who read the wall will see this – and possibly visit your site, and then return to “Like” your post on Facebook (or better yet, get some Social Plugins on your site so they can do it there and then).

Unfortunately, this tool is being misused by spammers too. So be careful how you use it – and as with anything online, make it relevant, make it unique, and make it count.

Link Wheels

August 23rd, 2010

Anyone that knows anything about search engine optimisation understands that link wheels are a big part of this and can have a large impact on your website and any future business that you could possibly do. When first explained to a person, link wheels can sound very confusing and seem too overwhelming to understand. When a person does not fully understand something, there is little chance that they will ever actually do it/get it done. However, when explained in the correct manner and in a way that anyone can understand, you will soon realise that link wheels are relatively easy to learn about and therefore, relatively easy to accomplish yourself for your own website. Link wheels really can change the way in which clients are attracted to your business. You literally will have links all over the web pointing directly to your website, generating more real traffic and therefore, in the long term, making more of those sales!

As well as providing links and therefore new clients, the link wheels are also a great way to boost your rankings on the search engines like Google. As part of a link wheel package, if you decide to hire someone to do this job for you, is article writing. If you are uploading regular unique content to your website everyday with your keywords of choice, the search engines will soon pick up on this and begin to notice and “like” your site a lot more. Another major aspect of the link wheels are the video creation and submissions that are regularly part of the package price. A short video will be created based around your website and its products and then submitted to certain directories in order to build up your links. When all of these links are live online, you will soon start to see the benefit of link wheels, even if you have been sceptical up until now!

Why do a press release?

August 20th, 2010

Search engine optimisation is a huge part of any online business now-a-days and can be make or break for a lot of people. Not enough back links and you won’t get the sales you desire, too many back links too soon and Google will maybe sandbox your site. With so much to learn it seems impossible to do a good job unless you are a professional and one of the best at that! However, despite your first impression, SEO can be very easy to learn and accomplish successfully for anyone, providing you are using the best methods such as link wheels and press releases.

Press releases are a relatively easy way to get your site up to the top pages of Google – and maybe even the first page if you do it right! First of all, you need to ascertain that your written press release falls in line with the guidelines set out by the companies you will be submitting it to for example, if they allow the anchored link you should put in. If it isn’t, then your work will be rejected and unpublished – not a great start to say the least! So, once you have mastered the art of writing these press releases, making sure you have entered a strong enough keyword density, you can then begin the submission process and start reaping the benefits of your work.

You need to ensure you use the best submission websites around in order to obtain the best results for your website. Providing your niche is a good enough one, your website can be boosted to the first or second page of Google within 3 days! However, you must ensure you allow your new website to gather a few back links from elsewhere first as if it is hit with hundreds very quickly then there is a possibility of it being removed from Google all together for quite some time! If all this sounds a little too much for you or you don’t feel quite up to the challenge just yet, you can always hire someone else to do the job for you!


Blog	Facebook	Twitter

You Tube		Hub Pages

Squidoo	Stumble Upon	Digg