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Table of ContentsIntroduction to Six Figure Affiliate Blogging .............. 4About the Author & Six Figure Affiliate Blogging
My 12 Month Case Study to Profits
The Concept of “Six Figure Affiliate Blogging”
Introduction to Affiliate Marketing ........................... 8What is Affiliate Marketing?
How Affiliate Marketing Works
Understanding Affiliate Pay Structures
Using Affiliate Networks to Make Money
Blogging Game Plan .............................................14Choosing Your Blog Topic?
How to Find a Profitable Blog Topic
Going Live With Your Blog ......................................20Setting Up Your First Blog & Web Hosting
Why You Need a Custom Blog Theme
Standing Out from the Crowd
Proven Methods for Free Traffic Generation
Proven Methods for Paid Traffic Generation
Killer Content is Still King
Making Your Blog Profitable ..................................35How Bloggers Make Money from Blogging
Top Earning Blogs
Real Life Blogging Examples
Finding Advertisers for Your Blog
Breakdown of a Profitable Niche Blog
How AsSeenOnTV-Products.net was Redesigned
Using Wordpress for Lead Generation
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Blog Monetization Tips .........................................53Understanding How Readers View Your Blog
Convert New Readers into a Mailing List
Improve Ad Sales with a Blog Media Kit
Grow a Twitter Following While You Sleep
Taking Your Blog to the Next Level ..........................58Replicating the Process
Outsourcing Your Blog Content
Creating Your Own Product
Buying and Selling Established Blogs
BONUS: Six Figure Blogging Interviews ...................64JEREMY SCHOEMAKER of SHOEMONEY.COM
GARY VAYNERCHUK of WINELIBRARY.COM
DANIEL SCOCCO of DAILYBLOGTIPS.COM
JOHN CHOW of JOHNCHOW.COM
ADII PIENAAR of WOOTHEMES.COM
JOSH MULLINEAUX of UNIQUEBLOGDESIGNS.COM
BRIAN CLARK of COPYBLOGGER.COM
TIMOTHY SYKES of TIMOTHYSYKES.COM
AL CALRTON of COOLEST-GADGETS.COM
DAVID KLEIN of PURPOSEINC.COM
JOEL COMM OF JOELCOMM.COM
NEIL PATEL OF QUICKSPROUT.COM
SHAWN COLLINS OF AFFILIATETIP.COM
JONATHAN VOLK OF JONATHANVOLK.COM
IAN FERNANDO OF IANFERNANDO.COM
DAN SCHAWBEL OF PERSONALBRANDING.COM
JIM KUKRAL OF JIMKUKRAL.COM
MARKO SARIC OF HOWTOMAKEMYBLOG.COM
SYED BALKHI OF WPBEGINNER.COM
MURRAY NEWLANDS OF MURRAY NEWLANDS.COM
GIDEON SHALWICK OF GIDEONSHALWICK.COM
YARO STARAK OF ENTREPRENEURS-JOURNEY.COM
DAVID RISLEY OF DAVIDRISLEY.COM
CARL OCAB OF CARLOCAB.COM
MICHAEL DUNLOP OF RETIREAT21.COM
BONUS: Resource Directory ................................. 135
Six Figure Blogging
Zac Johnson
iIntroductionto Six FigureAffiliate Blogging
Introduction to Six Figure Affiliate Blogging
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About the Author & Six Figure Affiliate BloggingMy name is Zac Johnson and I’ve been an affiliate marketer for nearly 15 years. I first started when I was in high school, pushing traffic and sales to Amazon.com, and quickly found myself in the affiliate marketing industry. There are a lot of affiliate guides floating around, so I decided to create a guide with a different perspective, using affiliate marketing in conjunction with a blog to generate over $100,000 a year in sales and commissions.
While I’ve been making a living for almost 15 years as an internet marketer, I started blogging less than 3 years ago. I started my own blog at ZacJohnson.com to share my stories, spread awareness and talk about what I love doing... making money online and teaching others to do the same. This “How to be the Next Six Figure Affiliate Blogger” guide isn’t about creating a blog on affiliate marketing, or getting lost in the “make money online” get rich schemes. Instead, it’s about finding a blogging niche and using affiliate marketing to generate revenue from that blog.
Let’s talk some numbers. When I first started ZacJohnson.com, I never planned for it to explode and become another six figure a year project, but with massive work, branding and dedication to the site, it became just that. My bread and butter is still in the affiliate marketing game. Through this free guide, I hope to inform you about both affiliate marketing and blogging... taking them both to the next level and give you a winning business model.
If you are to walk away with anything from this guide, you must understand that if your business is online, you can work virtually anywhere in the world as long as you have a computer and internet connection. No longer are you limited to hourly wages and a 5 day work week. With the winning combination of affiliate marketing and a successful blog, you can be earning money 365 days a year. Remember, it only takes $273.97 per day to make an extra $100,000 per year. Don’t quit your day job just yet... but how hard would it be for you to invest your time and efforts to make an extra $28 a day ($10,000 extra a year)... while building up a small business on the side?
Get ready... I’m about to walk you through the process of how I brought ZacJohnson.com from a blank page domain name sitting around for a while, to a six figure a year blog… and how you can do the same.
Author, Zac Johnson
Years Online: 15
Years Blogging: 3
Blogging Income: >$100k
WWW: ZacJohnson.com
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My 12 Month Case Study to ProfitsWhen I first went live with my blog at ZacJohnson.com, I decided to go with a very clean design and had no on site advertising. The beginning months of your blog are important for building up readership and focusing on content. For the first few months, there wasn’t much traffic to the blog, so there was no point in trying to find advertisers for the site. Instead I concentrated on building up readership, authority and my branding.
The blog went live in March 2007, but I didn’t start trying to make a profit with the site until December 2007. It was in Dec 07, when I decided to launch a 12 month case study on the blog’s revenue performance. The first month, in which the blog went profitable, it earned $1,261.81. Before the end of the 12 month case study, the blog was already topping over $6,000 a month and is now earning over six figures a year today.
A full break down of revenue earned during that 12 month case study is shown below. From December 2007 through November 2008, the blog made over $48,000 in profit and I had spent less than a few hundred dollars on small ad testing to bring in new traffic. Web hosting costs also weren’t an issue, as I was hosting several of my other sites on the same server.
The main sources of revenue for the blog were from on site advertising and network referrals. You can view each month’s full report and breakdown in my “Blog Earnings” section on ZacJohnson.com.
ZacJohnson.com 12 Month Case Study ReportDecember 2007 - November 2008
Total Earnings: $48,759.78
$-
$1,000.00
$2,000.00
$3,000.00
$4,000.00
$5,000.00
$6,000.00
$7,000.00
Dec-07 Jan-08 Feb-08 Mar-08 Apr-08 May-08 Jun-08 Jul-08 Aug-08 Sep-08 Oct-08 Nov-08
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The Concept of “Six Figure Affiliate Blogging”Everyone wants to live the American dream, and become a millionaire! That’s how it used to be… now people are just looking for a job and want some financial stability. I created this guide book not only to help newbie bloggers, affiliate marketers, and
established entrepreneurs, but also for anyone who never fully understood the power of blogging and how to many money online.
Through this guide, you will learn everything from how to setup your own blog, to putting your established blog on autopilot and creating a new revenue stream that brings in money month after month. I will also be covering the basics of affiliate marketing, which will be the backbone to your blog’s revenue.
When you see read the title of this guide and see “Six Figure” mentioned, this may blow some of you away and think it would never be possible for you. Instead of looking at the big number, break this down. There are 365 days in a year, and your blog will be working for you every day of the year. This means your blog would only need to generate $273.97 per day to be making $100,000 a year.
Depending on where you are currently at, becoming a six figure blogger isn’t you’re your immediate goal should be. Yes, it is possible to make a few extra hundred dollars a month, or even create a new six figure revenue source… but not without immediate action and dedication! Blogging is one of the slowest and hardest methods for generating money online, but at the same time it also has very low start up costs and if built correctly, can become of the most stable business methods around.
Whether you are a newbie, or experiences online marketer, this guide has something for everyone… and hopefully inspires you to become the next Six Figure Affiliate Blogger!
Through this guide, you will learn everything from
how to setup your own blog, to putting your established
blog on autopilot and creating a new revenue stream
that brings in money month after month.
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1Introductionto Affiliate
Marketing
Introduction to Affiliate Marketing
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What is Affiliate Marketing?Without affiliate marketing, my blogging success would not have been possible. When I first started making money online, it was through earning commissions on Amazon.com and sending new visitors to their site. Back in the day, when I referred a customer to Amazon and they made a purchase, I would then earn a commission on that sale. Jump ahead to 2010 and affiliate marketing has expanded like crazy and is making more people more money than ever.
With over a decade of experience, stories of success/failures and a passion for affiliate marketing, that became my gateway into starting my own blog. Without the passion and interest for writing about my blog topic, I would have had a much harder time becoming a prominent voice in this industry, and the blog would have probably failed.
In short, affiliate marketing is the backbone of how many successful blogs and businesses make money online. This guide was created for the use of both blogging and affiliate marketing. Before jumping into creating your own blog, you must first understand the basics of affiliate marketing.
How Affiliate Marketing WorksIn the past how did companies measure return on investment for their advertising methods, such as billboard advertising and TV commercials? It wasn’t easy. No longer are companies putting all of their advertising dollars towards billboards, print and television and just hoping for results. Companies have now been turning their advertising budget towards affiliate marketing and the internet. With affiliate marketing everything is tracked, companies can tell exactly what the return on their advertising investment is. Who bought what… when, where, how and sometimes even why.
In short, affiliate marketing is the backbone of
how many successful blogs and businesses make money online.
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The diagram shown below explains how affiliate marketing works among the customer, affiliate and seller (often referred to as “merchant”).
Let’s use a popular online book store’s affiliate program as an example. As a blog owner, I write a review about a wonderful book I just read. I can either place a link in my review directly linking someone to the book seller, in which case they (the book seller) receives full credit for the sale, or I could join their affiliate program (if they have one) and become an affiliate of the book seller. As an affiliate, you would earn a commission on all referred sales or actions taking place on the merchant’s site.
Once approved by the merchant, I can now log into my affiliate area and generate an affiliate link to any product on their site. Instead of direct linking to the online book store, if someone visits my site, clicks on my affiliate and makes a purchase, I would earn a commission on that sale.
With affiliate marketing, you never have to handle any orders, deal with customer support or billing, and most importantly there is no inventory. Everything is tracked online and as an affiliate, you are paid weekly or monthly depending on your preferred affiliate program or network. While maybe over simplified a bit, this is why affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to run a business and how anyone can start making money online without needing to spend thousands of dollars on staff, inventory or even an office.
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Understanding Affiliate Pay StructuresAmazon.com’s associate program is one of the world’s first, largest and most successful programs of it’s kind. Not only did it help build Amazon.com into the company it is today, but it paved the way for others to realize the power of affiliate marketing.
Earning commissions on the sale of a product (Pay Per Sale) is just one way to earn money using affiliate programs. The majority of affiliate programs are broken down into three categories; Pay Per Lead, Pay Per Sale and Pay Per Click.
Î Pay Per Lead: This is what affiliate marketing is all about, being paid for an action. Most programs fall into this category as it means being compensated for an action taking place on the advertisers site. This can be anything from taking a survey, or filling out a form request a free trial. There is no set range for commissions in the cost per action (CPA) market. You will see email submit offers pay out in the $1-$2 range, while there are much higher program like weight loss trials (with credit card submit), that pay in the $40-$60 action range.
Î Pay Per Sale: Much like Cost Per Action, but more targeted towards sales and purchases. A Cost Per Sale method of advertising usually pays a set price, or a percentage of final purchase. Amazon.com’s associate program can be considered Cost Per Sale, as you will only earn a percentage (commission) on every purchase referred to their site.
Î Pay Per Click: The majority of affiliate programs are running on a Per Per Lead or Pay Per Sale structure. Programs using a Pay Per Click method, are paying affiliates based on the number of clicks they generate for an advertiser regardless of sale. You won’t find as many affiliate programs using a Pay Per Click model, as it leaves the door open for fraudulent activity and lower conversions on final sales.
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Using Affiliate Networks to Make MoneyIn the mid to late 1990s, there were only a handful of companies utilizing affiliate marketing. Now there are thousands. Which networks are best for you and who you should trust, is the biggest factors when joining a new affiliate network. In this section, we will breakdown the benefits of using an affiliate network, why some are better than others, and identify a few of the top performing affiliate networks in our industry.
What is an Affiliate Network?
The best way to describe an affiliate network is to think of a mediator between merchants (advertisers) and affiliates. If you’ve ever bought a house, you normally have a lawyer and use an escrow account. The seller and buyer won’t exchange money and/or the house, until both parties are satisfied… the same concept can be applied to an affiliate network. The affiliate network stands between the merchant and affiliate and insures legitimacy for both sides. The primary reason why affiliate networks exist is so an affiliate can find a wide variety of offers in one location, and merchants can have access to many affiliates. The affiliate network does the overhead of recruiting affiliates, bringing in new advertisers, tracking leads and sending out payments. For performing this overhead, affiliate networks receive a commission, usually receiving commissions in the 15-30% range for their work. (Example: If an offer is paying $10 per lead, the advertiser is probably paying $13 and the network earns $3 per lead.)
Why You Should Use an Affiliate Network?
As an affiliate, there are a lot of options for running offers and making money. The best and most efficient way to find new offers and get started is to join an affiliate network. Not only do networks have a great deal of offers/merchants to choose from, but they also offer affiliate support, creative services and can normally pay more on offers if you can provide increased volume. Most importantly, you can run several different offers at the same time, and then receive one check at the end of the week/month.
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Benefits of Using an Affiliate Network:
Some of the benefits gained from using an affiliate network include, all tracking and payments are done by the network, networks act as a middle man and in many cases will pay their affiliates even if the network itself is not paid by the advertiser. Rewards programs and incentives are also offered by affiliate networks. A lot of networks like to motivate their affiliates to bring in more volume and earn more money. From time to time, some networks offer a 1-2% bonus on monthly earnings, or will reward affiliates with vacations or other prizes to encourage affiliates to raise their performance level.
Recommended Affiliate Networks:
After running ZacJohnson.com over the past few years, I’ve had the opportunity to work with a lot of affiliate networks, as well as send a lot of new affiliates their way. A few of the top referred earnings and most recommended networks are listed below.
Î ClickBooth: With over 4000 active affiliate offers and ranked as the Number #1 affiliate network in the world by Website Magazine, ClickBooth has quite an established position in the affiliate industry. Not only is ClickBooth a great company to work with, but they have an awesome staff and affiliate support team as well.
Î Neverblue: Over One Million Dollars has been earned by affiliates that have signed up to Neverblue through my blog at ZacJohnson.com. Not only are they one of the largest affiliate programs around, but they are one of the longest running and most successful. I highly recommend Neverblue, and they are more accepting of new affiliates than other networks.
Î PeerFly: A well respected network with over 300 different offers, specializing in Email/Zip Submits, Healthy and Beauty and As Seen on TV offers. Lately I’ve integrated offers from PeerFly with a few of my smaller blogs and have seen substantial growth in revenue by employing their offers.
For more affiliate networks, visit the Affiliate Network Guide at ZacJohnson.com.
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2BloggingGame Plan
Blogging Game Plan
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Choosing Your Blog Topic?The toughest part of starting a new blog, is deciding what you are going to write about! It sounds cliché, but in all honesty, if you choose something you are passionate about, you are much more likely to succeed. Choosing a blog topic you have little or no interest in just won’t cut it. When you are passionate about the topic, your blog content will show it. This is what readers are looking for.
Let’s break down your potential blog topics into three categories; Personal, Branding, for Profit.
Î The Personal Blog There is nothing wrong with having a personal blog, as long as you fill it with personal content. It would be very difficult to create a personal blog, then try and monetize it down the road. The majority of personal blogs are never meant to generate income, but instead simply to inform, and are usually a first attempt at creating a blog. If you are going to create a blog for profit and potentially sell it the future, be sure not to use your actual name as the domain name, as this limits its use for anyone else.
Î Branding Blog What are you good at, or known for? Whether it is your business, profession or even a hobby... blogging for branding is a great idea. As a “brand” blog, you will want to continually add new posts about your expertise and keep all topics tightly on target with your niche topic. Once you establish your creditability and audience, advertisers in this same niche will flock to advertise on your blog.
Î Blogging for Profit Some want to blog for profit, but it takes more than creating a blog with a few affiliate links. It’s not easy to make money through blogging, but with full dedication and a business mindset from the start, it can make your success that much easier. An excellent way to blog for profit is to find a product or service you have an interest in, and build a blog around it. Continually build up content, reviews and resources to become a top blog within your niche community. It is also important to do the proper research and see if that individual product already has an affiliate program you can tie into.
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How to Find a Profitable Blog TopicWhen trying to select a topic to write about, make sure it can grow and be expanded into something worthwhile and profitable to your readership.
The ability to expand is critical. Cooking is a good example of a blogging topic that many are passionate about, it can also expand in size and profitability. How many people search Google every day for recipes, purchase cookbooks and want to save money while shopping? In this one example, we find three quick topics that you could cover on your blog. All three of these topics have a high interest as shown by Google, and a strong potential for revenue generation.
Without knowing anything about advertising, here are the best ways to find out if your blogging niche can be a profitable one.
Search Your Potential Competition
One of the best ways to search and find what advertisers and offers are working in your niche market, is to see what your competitors are doing. Head over to Technorati’s Blog Directory and choose a topic that is related to your niche.
You can use Technorati’s search form, or their directory categories. From the categories list, let’s choose “Foods”. You can see right away there are over 6,000 blogs listed in the “food” section alone. What also grabs your eyes is a preview of each blog listed. Browse through the blogs listed, study how each of these sites are designed, what they talk about and if they have any advertising/revenue generation. Is their content providing value to their readership?
Don’t be discouraged. The sites you find in Technorati may already be well established and have a lot of traffic. It’s important to realize they are targeting the same niche audience you are going to create a blog for, so it’s critical to learn what’s out there and working prior to starting your blog.
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Google Keywords & Pay Per Click Stats
One of the easiest and most effective ways to search general interest in your topic, amount of advertisers and search volume, is to simply use Google. Google offers many tools to their site users, but especially for their advertisers. Two tools you must know and learn about are the following:
Google Adwords Keyword Tool
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
Google Adwords Traffic Estimator
https://adwords.google.com/select/TrafficEstimatorSandbox
The reason why I had you look at Technorati’s Blog Directory first, is so you have a good idea of a few top sites in your niche. You can now use that same list and incorporate your data with Google’s traffic tools.
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Now head over to the Google Adwords Keyword Tool and in the area that says “How would you like to generate keyword ideas?”, click the “Website content” area. This should now generate a form for you to type in a web site url. In this area, type in any of the relevant sites (such as “cooking recipes”) in your niche and click “Get keyword ideas”.
You should now see a breakdown of all relevant keywords and phrases relating to your niche and web site. The data here shows illustrates how much search volume each keyword has, and how much advertiser competition there is for each keyword.
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The last step in this process is to take your niche keywords (we are going to use the top results from the “cooking” search above) and bring them over to the Google Adwords Traffic Estimator. This tool will show which keywords generate the highest cost per click and an estimate on traffic data for advertisers. While these numbers may not be completely accurate, they will give you a rough idea on what keywords bring in the most money, along with helping you decided on what keywords you should be focusing on.
Not only is this information useful for finding related topics for blog posts, but it can also help you decide what type of blog content will deliver the highest paying Google Adsense results, and is also heavily used by advertisers of Google Adwords when setting up ad campaigns.
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3GoingLive WithYour Blog
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Setting Up Your First Blog & Web HostingBlogging has gained so much interest over the past years, that it’s now easy for anyone to get a blog up and running. You have the option of running a free blog through blogger.com, but I would not recommend this method. Setting up your blog on a free host may seem like a good idea, but you will find you are limited on what you can do with your site, you are reliant on other people’s web hosting and you will end up with a domain that looks something like this, yourblogname.blogspot.com. A url such as this will not be taken very seriously.
Fortunately, the best web site hosting companies in the business have realized there is a huge demand for bloggers who want low cost hosting, with all the perks of having their own domain and complete ownership of their blog.
Companies like HostGator and BlueHost have made it extremely simply for you to sign up for your own domain, web hosting and even going live with your blog in a single click.
Since most of my blog readers are already advanced in this area, I’m only going to briefly touch on this topic.
How to Quickly Setup Your New Blog
You need to immediately seize the moment while you are in the action mode and reading this ebook. The majority of people who are reading this guide will want to take everything in, and then WAIT for a business idea, then wait for support from others or some other excuses not to get started now. That is one of the worst things you can do. Sure, making money online isn’t for everyone... but there is only one way to find out. Do it!
Within only a matter of minutes, you can have your domain and blog up and running. I highly recommend using HostGator as your web host. I recommend HostGator not only because they are ranked one of the top web hosting companies, but also because they have a very simple wordpress installation process.
Setting up your web hosting account with HostGator can be as low as $4.95 a month. That’s nearly the cost of one high end cup of coffee!
For more web site and blog hosting features, visit the Web Hosting Guide at ZacJohnson.com.
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Why You Need a Custom Blog ThemeWhen I first started my blog, I wanted to make sure I stood out from the rest. I was fortunate enough to already have an established revenue stream, so I spent a few hundred dollars on a custom blog design. Without a custom blog design, you can get lost in the crowd. I am fortunate enough to have close partners that relaunch my blog with a new theme every year. A new blog theme would cost the average blogger anywhere from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand for a custom theme. What’s the next best solution?
ZacJohnson.com BEFORE
the redesign
ZacJohnson.com AFTER
the redesign
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My favorite solution for wordpress themes is WooThemes, a subscription based service that provides access to a full inventory of custom themes. Every month WooThemes comes out with two new themes, all of their work is top notch and top quality. Once you are a paying member, you can use an unlimited amount of their themes on as many of your blogs as you like.
The themes available through WooThemes are a no brainer for me because of the amount of time it saves me when setting up a new mini blog. Instead of creating a completely custom theme and waiting on a designer, I simply log in to my account and grab a theme that meets my need and fits my niche. Nearly all of the themes available through WooThemes have advertising locations, widgets and different style/color schemes built in.
You can see a few of their themes below.
I currently have a “Club – Standard” account with WooThemes, which is a one time cost of $125, then $15 a month to remain a member and access their new monthly themes.
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If you are completely new to blogging and this is your first attempt at setting up a blog, there is no problem with searching around for a free custom theme. Search Google for “free wordpress themes” and find something you like. For the advanced blogger, I would recommend WooThemes any day of the week, as I’m always working with their themes. For more wordpress themes and must have wordpress plugins, visit the WordPress Themes Guide at ZacJohnson.com.
Standing Out from the CrowdIt has been reported that nearly 200,000 new blogs are created everyday. With such an astronomical number, how are you supposed to compete... or even get noticed? The truth is, blogging is one of the slowest means to generate revenue, but once established, it can be one of the best long term solutions, providing residual income.
As much as you need to make your blog stand out from the crowd, you also have to keep it unique, memorable and a value added for the reader. The bottom line is, you only have a few seconds to convince a user to stay on your site before they move on. Three major factors in attracting new viewers attention to ZacJohnson.com was to have a unique blog design, putting an image in the reader’s head, and providing eye grabbing and value added content.
Start Your Branding from Day One!
I’ve always been a huge fan of logo design and how much of an impact it can make on the branding and success of a company. When I first went live with ZacJohnson.com, I made sure I did something different. I decided to develop a cartoon logo/mascot which I created for the site. It wasn’t so much the concept of having a toon that was original, but the way it was made and the lasting impression it would have on readers. The bottom line is, the Zac Johnson toon has now been well branded and is a very recognizable logo within the affiliate marketing industry.
The bottom line is, you only have a few seconds
to convince a user to stay on your site before they move on.
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Let’s take a moment to breakdown my blog at ZacJohnson.com, and study how I customized it and added important features to the site that makes it stand out from the rest of the blogs in my niche and leave a lasting impression on the reader.
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5 Steps to Making
Your Blog Stand Out
#1Memorable Logo
#2Unique Header
#3Featured Blog Posts
#4 Custom Footer &
Bio
#5 Plugins,
Sidebars & More
1] Memorable / Recognizable Logo One of the first things you notice when you get to the ZJ blog is the big caricature of yours truly in the top left corner. Not only is it a character of me, but it’s also well branded with a dollar sign on the shirt, money in the hand and most importantly a crown, referring to my parent company “MoneyReign”. Since going live with the ZJ site, there is no doubt that the Zac Johnson toon is now a well branded symbol in the affiliate space, and has greatly contributed to the overall success of the site.
2] A Unique Header Design While the top of the blog may seem to look busy and have a lot going on, it surely beats the dead white space of a basic wordpress theme. Within the header space of my blog, I’m able to get my branding and name across, while offering full site navigation, RSS subscriber information and even some high profile advertising spots.
3] Featured and Most Popular Blog Posts With over 650 total individual blog posts written thus far on ZacJohnson.com, how are my new readers supposed to find the best posts I’ve published. In the “Best of Zac” section near the header, you will see five of my most popular blog posts rotating on the site. It’s important to highlight your best blog posts and grab the attention of your new readers before they decide to move on.
4] Custom Footer and Author Bio It’s not the most important feature on the site, but it sure is a nice closing. At the bottom of most blogs you will find a simple sitemap or copyright message. Take advantage of the footer on your blog and create something interesting… it’s probably your last shot at grabbing the user’s attention before they click off to somewhere else. In my footer I simply added an author bio, site map, partner sites and a short list of recommended affiliate networks. I also remind user one more time with the ZacJohnson.com logo to keep that branding issue in the back of their minds.
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5] Plugins, Sidebars and More Throughout the blog I also take advantage of some great wordpress plugins that help my social media exposure, additional advertising spots on my side bar and further navigation options to roam around the site. It’s important to add a lot of creativity to your blog, while offering enough options to keep your users interested, but not overwhelmed.
For more wordpress themes and must have wordpress plugins, visit the
WordPress Themes Guide at ZacJohnson.com.
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4GettingTraffic toYour Blog
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Proven Methods for Free Traffic GenerationHaving a blog with a great design and killer content is an amazing start, but you still need to get new traffic to your blog. In this section I highlight a few of the top methods for bringing free quality and niche traffic to your blog.
Î Facebook Fan Pages I’m sure most of you are already on Facebook, but how many of you are also “fans” of other products and web sites on Facebook? Did you know you can create a fan page for a blog? It’s simple, easy and free. The best part is, once someone becomes a fan of your blog, they will then be able to see your blog updates when they are using Facebook.
Î Twitter Just like Facebook, it seems everyone is on Twitter too. Companies and web sites are quickly catching on and creating new Twitter pages for each of their sites and products. Creating a Twitter account for your blog is another effective way to bring in a new readership, build a following and display your RSS feeds and updates directly to users while on Twitter.
Î Article Writing How many times have you searched Google for something and ended up on a site like “ezinearticles.com”? This is the result of article marketing. Ezinearticles.com has become an extremely large web site and a very useful resource. You can create a free author account on their site, add quality articles and content, then at the bottom of the article, you can link back to your web site. Having articles featured on popular sites that rank well in search engines can bring a lot of free quality targeted traffic.
Î Forums & Social Networking Signatures If you are going to be writing a blog on a niche topic that you enjoy, there is a good chance you are currently interacting with other users in that same niche area. One of the most popular methods for doing this is through a forum. For any forums, chat room and social networking sites that you are a member of, be sure to add your blog information so others can visit your site.
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Î Social Networking & Directories The method of manually adding a web site or blog to your browser by clicking “Add to Bookmarks” is quickly going to rest. Instead, social networking, rss feeds and blog directories are becoming the preference for bookmarking. Make sure that your blog includes all of the major social networking buttons and that your blog is listed in all major blog directories like Technorati and BlogCatalog.
Î Commenting on Blogs What are the most popular blogs in your niche area? If you aren’t commenting on these blogs, then you should be. Create an eye catching Gravatar/Icon for your comments and use your blog url in the web site field, and you should start seeing visitors to these sites clicking over to yours, based on your comments. After a few weeks of commenting, look at your traffic stats to see which blogs are sending you the most blog traffic and focus on them.
Î Guest Posting on Blogs Go a step above commenting. Find relevant blogs in your niche and ask if they can publish a guest post. Most blog owners are very busy and probably already have a lot of unread email in their inbox. If you are already contributing to their blog by commenting often, most would be more accepting of your blog post contribution than some random person emailing them. When requesting to write a guest post on a blog, it is recommended that you write your guest post and send it along with your email. This way the blog owner can see your work, and if interested, they can schedule it for a future post. If the blog owner comes back and says they are not interested, simply find another blog and send them the same guest post.
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Proven Methods for Paid Traffic GenerationNow that you know how to send free traffic to your blog, let’s up your game and talk about paid advertising tactics.
Î Build a Powerful Mailing List Quite possibly the most important tool for finding success and profit in blogging, is to build a mailing list. For only $1 you can setup your trial account with Aweber and start building a mailing list for your blogs. Benefits of having your own mailing list are; ability to continually growing your daily readership with new subscribers, providing weekly/daily RSS blog updates by email and the ability to send out newsletters or announcement mailings to your readers.
Î Text Link Advertising If you haven’t spent the time to build up quality posts or content on your blog, there is a good chance that many other blogs aren’t linking back to your site. Remember content is king. Another solution is to use services like Text Link Ads, which allow you to buy text links on other blogs. You choose the search phrase, and depending on the page rank of the site, you can pay anywhere from $5 to $100 a month for a text link. The goal here is to create text links with relevant search terms for your blog, which eventually will help with your search engines rankings.
Î Social Networking Advertising In the previous article I mentioned using Facebook and Twitter to create a Fan Page and bring in new followers. Another option is to create ad campaigns on Facebook, where you can advertise your Fan Page to Facebook users who have the same interests. You can also advertise on Twitter using services like SponsoredTweets and Ad.ly.
Î Search Engine Marketing If you are finding success with your blog, or easily converting visitors to join your mailing lists, you may do well with search engine marketing. Through pay per click advertising, you can get top rank listings on all of the major search engines. Clicks will vary in price, but if you work on less sought after keyword and search terms, you can still get clicks for a few pennies. Another option is to advertise on Google Content Network where clicks are even cheaper.
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Win Big with Blog Contests & Promotions
I’ve run a lot of contests of my blog over the past few years. Contests bring in a lot of attention, new readers and viral activity. One of the biggest perks about running a contest is that you can usually find a sponsor to give away a prize in exchange for some free advertising. I’ve also found that smaller priced items actually gain more attention than high end prizes.
Using the traffic promotions discussed in this chapter, you can create a contest on your blog in no time. Here’s how.
1] Bring in Free Viral Traffic to Your Site Using Twitter Twitter has been awesome for blogs that know how to take advantage of it. Create a contest, and require Twitter users to send out a “tweet” to enter. Once this tweet is sent out by one user, all of their followers see it, and some of their followers will do the same. The viral process just keeps going on and on, while bringing in new free traffic to your blog. You can then select a winner from everyone who has retweets your blog post.
2] Create a Fan Page on Facebook, Reward New Fans Just like the Twitter concept, but require Facebook users to become a “fan” of your blog on Facebook. When setting up your Facebook Fan Page, you can add your RSS feed, and each person who becomes a fan of your blog, is a new reader!
3] Leave a Comment, Win a Prize Running a contest and only requiring the reader to leave a comment for an entry is an excellent way to increase user activity. A lot of readers are lurkers and are very shy to leave comments. If you can get a few new readers to open up and leave a comment, it’s very contagious and more will follow!
4] Joining Your Mailing List As mentioned, creating a mailing list for your blog is the most effective way to generate long term revenue. Twitter and Facebook are great, but your messages can easily get lost among the other thousand updates that users are receiving. With a mailing list you can continually update your readers with weekly post updates and solo mailings on offers and promotions.
When picking a winner for a contest, most sites will add all entries into a list (or MS Excel), then user Random.org as a
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random number generator to select a winner from the list.
Killer Content is Still KingYou can take advantage of all of the free and paid traffic sources I’ve listed, but in the end it really comes down to your blog’s content. Just try and find a popular successful blog that everyone knows and talks about, that continually has bad content and nothing of value to the readership ... it just won’t happen.
When writing content for your blog, you should always keep a few goals in mind... is this post useful to those reading it, does it interact with my readers and is the headline eye grabbing? Continually writing new posts that fall into all of these categories will greatly improve the success, growth and value of your blog.
Think about the last web site or blog you went to, and why you went there. It’s most likely that you were looking for information, wanted to be entertained or wanted to buy something.
The content of your blog is the sole reason for people to visit your site. Before going live with your blog, make sure that you will have enough to write about on the topic. It’s important to keep blogs updated often. Most blogs should strive to post at least once a week, but the average is blogger is adding new content 1-3 times per week.
With over 650 posts published to-date at ZacJohnson.com, I’ve taken the time to list a few of the most commented on posts. As you will see, all of the titles are attention grabbing and make the user want to continue reading. This is very important for getting readers to your site if, as in the case of the rss feed, they are initially only seeing a small portion of your post.. You need to catch their interest fast.
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Most commented on posts:
My Blog Readers have Earned Over ONE MILLION with Neverblue (68 comments) http://zacjohnson.com/my-blog-readers-have-earned-over-one-million-with-neverblue/ Create Killer Landing Pages - Free Template (206 comments) http://zacjohnson.com/create-killer-landing-pages-free-template/ Insider Secrets to a Making a Million Dollar Web Site! (107 comments) http://zacjohnson.com/insider-secrets-to-a-making-a-million-dollar-web-site/ How I Made $860,538.38 PROFIT in 4 Months! (327 comments) http://zacjohnson.com/how-i-made-86053838-profit-in-4-months/ It’s not easy to create killer posts like the ones I’ve listed, but the time and effort is well worth the attention they receive over the life of your blog. It may only take 20 minutes to an hour to create a really great post, but if it’s something people like and share with others, that one 20 minute post can continually be viewed month after month for the life of your blog. The blog post topics that usually grab the most attention are Lists, Resources, Case Studies, News and Interviews.
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5MakingYour Blog Profitable
Making Your Blog Profitable
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How Bloggers Make Money from BloggingAs a blogger, the good news is you have a wide variety of options at your disposal to generate revenue with your blog. My favorite methods of revenue generation are through affiliate marketing, on site advertising and building a brand for myself.
Here is a full run down on some of the top ways to generate revenue with your blog.
Î Private Ad Sales / Banner Advertising The most obvious and well known method for generating income on line in general, is selling banner ad space on a web site or blog. In the early days, it was all about the 468x60 banners, but now banners are available in every size, and we often see the 125x125 ad spots selling on most blogs. Selling your own banner ad space on a blog is an excellent method for generating a recurring source of revenue month after month.
Î Affiliate Marketing Generating revenue on your blog via affiliate marketing can come in many forms. You can place banners on your blog, create text links, or even write articles about a specific topic of interest. In all three of these scenarios, affiliate marketing techniques can be employed. The bottom line is, you are setting up links on your blog, and getting paid a commission whenever a specific action (remember from earlier chapters CPC, CPA…) takes place regarding those links.
Î Contextual Advertising Not all text ads are created equal, especially on a blog. As a blog owner, you can link to various web sites, products or services using affiliate links. Any sales resulting from clicks to these sites will result in a commission. There are also many advertising and marketing agencies that want to place paid text link advertising on web sites and blogs. While this is generally frowned upon by Google, (because it’s a paid method of gaining back links) many of these text link ads are still generating millions of dollars.
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Î Creating Your Own Product Possibly one of the best long term and profitable solutions for a blog is to inform and promote a product of your own! With your own product, not only are you building a brand, but you are also keeping all of the profit. When you are able to create your own product, you have the world of affiliate marketing available to help market that product.
Î Membership Driven It’s hard to find anything better than month after month residual income found with a paid membership website/blog, but the process of building a paid membership is very tough. When creating a blog that you expect readers to pay for, you must create and offer something original that provides real value to your readers. Once a blogger puts in the hard work of establishing a real value to their readers and is able to successfully create a pain membership program, you can expect to see earnings jump ten fold, and now on a monthly recurring basis.
Î Blog Reviews Writing reviews on your blog is an excellent way to generate extra revenue. When writing a review, you have the option to write about any product, site or service, and you can link to the offer through an affiliate program, earning a commission on any sales. Another alternative is “paid reviews”, where you simply do a review on a blog or web site for a set price. Make sure to follow all “disclosure” policies when writing paid reviews, and always be honest. Don’t jeopardize your brand by recommending something you haven’t personally experienced. Even paid reviews can be less than stellar, maintain your integrity at all times.
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Top Earning BlogsNow that you have a basic understanding of the many different ways to generate revenue with a blog, let’s take a look at how current blogs are doing it. Below is a listing of top blogs in their respective niches, all easily earning over six figures per year.
BLOG MONTHLY REVENUE INCOME SOURCE
TechCrunch.com $200,000 Advertising
Mashable.com $200,000 Advertising
TimothySykes.com $150,000 Products & Memberships
PerezHilton.com $140,000 Advertising & Branding
SmashingMagazine.com $60,000 Advertising
JohnChow.com $40,000 Advertising
I chose the group of blogs in the chart above, because each of them represents a different niche and make money in slightly different ways. TechCrunch and Mashable are both mega blogs with multiple writers, focusing on both internet business and social media. Timothy Sykes was able to take his amazing success in trading stocks and turn it into his own product and membership site. Perez Hilton has flipped his crazy antics and celebrity gossip into a “brandable” celebrity blog. Smashing Magazine is a tutorial/design based blog that can drive advertisers to their die hard design readers. Lastly, John Chow originally created his blog with the concept of making money by telling you how he makes money. Not only has his name become infamous in the affiliate / blogging arena, but he’s now made a full time job out of it.
Let’s compare two completely different niches and see how their respective blog advertising works. TechCrunch.com has millions of targeted users accessing the site daily who are all interested in tech news and business. There are three prominent banner spots shown on the blog, the top leaderboard is a 300x250 on the top right, then four 125x125 ad spots after the first featured article, and even more when you scroll down the page. All advertising campaigns are handled by iSocket and require a minimum commitment of $5,000 for consideration. Obviously TechCrunch is a major player.
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Now, let’s completely change the niche, and look at PerezHilton.com. Perez has done an amazing job at establishing a name for himself and has grown his blog into a full time business, and he did so in an amazingly short period of time. Compared to TechCrunch you see a few different advertising options. PerezHilton.com has a 728x60 leaderboard on top of the blog, or a 300x250 ad after the first featured ad post. On the right menu of Perez Hilton’s blog, you see a continuous row of advertising going down the page. This advertising is handled by BlogAds, and requires a $10,000 minimum commitment.
The takeaway here is that each of these blogs has their own niche market and traffic stream, and all have unique methods of earning revenue. This is important to remember before you start diving into a project, or creating a new blog. You should ask these questions of yourself early and often, what’s my target niche? Who is my target audience and how will I generate my traffic stream, and finally what revenue model (if any) do I want to pursue.
Real Life Blogging ExamplesLet’s take a closer look at how the most successful bloggers of today are succeeding. In this section I will examine a few very successful current blogs and how they are making money and building a brand for themselves. Each of the blogs listed is targeting a different niche, and making their money using unique methods including; Membership based, Advertising, Branding and Product Reviews.
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TimothySykes.com - Membership Driven Blog The concept of starting a membership site may seem way over your head, but if you have the product or service, it may be exactly what’s best for you. My good friend Tim Sykes struck gold with his blog at TimothySykes.com when he decided to go the membership route. Already financially secure, Tim is well known for turning his $12,415 in Bar Mitzvah gift money into $2 million and started a hedge fund during his senior year in high school. Instead of focusing on how he could continue to make money in the stock market for himself, or charge outrageous consulting fees, Tim wanted to create something everyone could take part in and share in his success. In short, when Tim makes a stock trade, he let’s you know before he buys or sell. As a paying member to his site, you receive email or text alerts of his stock transactions, along with other benefits. Membership rates to TimothySykes.com range from $49.95 a month to $1497 per month. Along with memberships, Tim also has several learning systems and DVDs available for purchase. With such a unique and quality system, it’s no wonder that TimothySykes.com continually earns over six figures per month.
RECOMMENDED: For anyone who likes trading stocks, or wants to start trading, I highly recommend using Tim Sykes as a learning tool and as a trading method. I’m personally on Tim Syke’s monthly trading program where he sends out daily alerts on what he buys and sells. You simply have to create your own trading account and do the same. It’s been working amazing for Tim and all of his users. It’s definitely worth looking into if you have any interest in stocks and trading. Join Tim Alerts.
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JohnChow.com – Advertising Based Revenue Imagine being able to make a full time living off telling other people how much money you make online? That’s exactly what John Chow of JohnChow.com did! One of the most controversial blog-gers over the past few years, John has even gotten the attention of Google, which had him black-listed from their search engine for years… but with some compliance and changes, John Chow is once again #1 on Google when you search for his name. What used to be an online diary of the daily musings and eating habits of John, is now more focused on different ways to make money online, reviews and a mixture of affiliate marketing. In the end, the attraction to JohnChow.com was a fascination of making riches online through blogging, simply by telling others how you are making money online. JohnChow.com is still laughing all the way to the bank and bringing in over $50,000 a month.
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GaryVaynerchuk.com – Name Branding & Product Revenue One of my close friends, and nicest guys around, Gary Vaynerchuk is a great example of the power of blogging. Gary V, originally known for his passion and knowledge of wines, first became famous through WineLibrary.TV. When you think about passionate bloggers, Gary is at the top of the list. I keep reiterating this, but passion is required for the kind of success Gary has had. First a wine enthusiast, and now a web entrepreneur, New York Times Best Selling Author, and nearly on every talk show there is, Gary is what every blogger strives to be. Take a look at his sites, NO ADVERTIS-ING. It’s all about Gary, his passions, companies (VaynerMedia.com and Corkd.com) and not to mention his massive book deal. Crush It!
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Coolest-Gadgets.com – Product Based Revenue Product based revenue can be seen in two ways; selling actual product, and writing about prod-ucts. Coolest-Gadgets.com focuses on the later. With nearly 70,000 RSS subscribers and a never ending supply of products to talk about, Coolest-Gadgets mission is the “ongoing search for the coolest gadgets”. After taking a look at the site, you will find a ton of relevant information and reviews, but I would focus on all of the different revenue streams. You will find everything from Google Adsense, Chitika, on site advertising and more. Coolest-Gadgets.com is an excellent site for learning how to monetize a blog with only quality content and affiliate marketing.
All four of the blogs mentioned here are the cream of the crop, but they all made their name and money on their own terms and though tireless efforts. Try to simply any of the sites mentioned and you will most likely fail. Finding success with blogging isn’t easy and definitely not something you can accomplish over night. Everyone of the blogs mentioned spent hundreds of hours and bled out their souls to make their blogs what it is today.
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Finding Advertisers for Your BlogThe first method, and most preferred method for revenue generation with a blog, is onsite advertising. Depending on your niche, the choice of finding advertisers may be a tough one. This is something you will have to think about before diving into a new blog. The “affiliate industry” was a great success for me because it’s more of a B2B (business to business) model on my blog. Ad networks are looking for new affiliates to bring in more leads, and my target audience is affiliate marketers. If you had a sports related blog, it may be tough to find advertisers because it’s a broad topic and so many blogs already exist on that topic.
Nearly all advertising on my blogs comes from direct advertisers and my own ad sales. The first several months of your blog will be focused on building up content and readership. Once you reach a higher level, advertisers and media buyers should start approaching you about advertising on your sites. One of the top selling wordpress ad management systems is called OIO Publisher, and it allows you to automatically accept, bill and rotate advertising spots on your blog. When an advertiser visits your site and clicks on a “Advertise Here” button on your site, they get sent to an order form page. You would then automatically receive payment through Paypal, and their ad would go live, with full stats tracking available.
If selling your own advertising space on your blog isn’t your cup of tea, there are many ad serving networks available. Two networks I am currently using are AdvertiseSpace and BuySellAds. Both of these networks cater to bloggers and have a market place for selling open ad inventory. The network acts as a middle man directory and lists your ad spots for sale, along with demographic, traffic and site information for advertisers to see. You simply place a line of code on your blog and the ad service will manage your inventory, take a percentage of sales (usually 25%) and mail you a check (or paypal) at the end of each month. All of this is done for you without ever having to manually place an ad, or talk directly with advertisers.
Adding advertiser or customer testimonials to your blog is always beneficial. Having worked with several affiliate networks, it’s always great to hear back from advertisers when they are seeing results. With over $1 million in referred earnings sent to Neverblue through advertising on ZacJohnson.com, their company has always been gracious in providing updated testimonials. The same holds true for many other companies like ClickBooth, which has also been a premier sponsor on my blog for years now.
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“Congratulations to Zac on reaching the $10k affiliate referral commission mark with Neverblue this month!! To date Zac has sent approximately 1400 affiliates to Neverblue and the number keeps increasing. It is awesome to see that Zac’s referral have made over $500,000 in revenue with us. We are excited to keep growing with the affiliates and help Super Affiliates like Zac reach the $1 MILLION milestone!”
Tina Chien 3/26/09Business Development Manager, Neverblue
“Congratulations Zac on surpassing the $1 million dollar milestone! The Marketing department at Neverblue is always thrilled to see the number of referred Affiliates Zac provides us with. To date Zac has been responsible for delivering over $1,000,000 in referred earnings to Neverblue! I am looking forward to seeing the quality Zac can continue to bring to our Affiliate referral program”
Breanne Storey 11/25/09Marketing and Communications Specialist, Neverblue
“Advertising on Zac’s blog has paid for itself ten-fold. The amount of quality affiliates we continue to receive from his site has not only enabled us to continue advertising there, but to also increase our ad spend year after year. Zac’s hard work, in-depth knowledge, and passion for the industry continues to generate more and more loyal readers to his blog everyday, which makes advertising on his site a no brainer.”
Eric Schechter 3/4/10Social Media Managert Manager, ClickBooth
Finding the Sweet Spot for Your Advertising Rates
Whether you are going to sell advertising on your own, or use another third party, it’s important to find the right pricing for your ads. Your top priority should be for advertisers to get a good return on their investment, rather than trying to get top dollar for your ad space. It’s better to have happy long term advertisers, than trying to fill up open ad space month after month. If you can provide quality leads with decent pricing, your advertisers will likely continue with their ad campaigns.
Affiliate Networks are Your Key to Profits
How are multi-million dollar companies like P90X, Apple, Amazon and Best Buy ever supposed to find your blog, and how valuable of a resource it can be for their products? The truth is, they probably never will find it... and that’s where “affiliate networks” come into play. Just like we talked about middle man companies selling advertising on your blog, affiliate networks are the same concept, except on a “pay per action” basis. In short, this means you choose the advertisers and offers you would like to place on your blog, and if anyone clicks through that link or banner and takes a specific action, you will earn a commission. All ad tracking, agreements and payments are handled by the affiliate network. It’s your job to find what offers work best on your blog.
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Breakdown of a Profitable Niche BlogA little over a year ago I was playing around with the idea of creating a “As Seen on TV” blog that would review and provide information on infomercial products. I created a new blog called AsSeenOnTV-Products.net, which also is currently using a WooThemes theme. For as many “As Seen on TV” products as I could find that had an affiliate program, I would have new review related articles written. The majority of articles consisted of reviews, product information and where to buy.
With other sites and projects taking up most of my time, I ended up leaving this site on the back burner. Before doing so, I had taken all of my articles and scheduled them for going live every few days. I also made sure to have all any products linked through my affiliate url, so I would earn a commission on any resulting sales.
A few weeks went by and I was noticing some traffic coming through the search engines. As new products and commercials were gaining attention, customers were searching for these product names and reviews. Thanks to the power of wordpress and already having several articles prewritten, this site was generating money on auto pilot while I focused my efforts elsewhere.
If people are going to search engines and looking for reviews on a topic, there’s a good chance they are in a buying mode. Most of the visitors to AsSeenOnTV-Products.net fell into this category. As a result, I was earning a nice commission on every product sold through the site.
I never did end up making this site a top priority of mine, but it still has great potential as search engine traffic and sales keep trickling in. Even better, it makes for a great case study for this guide.
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The affiliate earnings from AsSeenOnTV-Products.net were just one source of monetization for this type of blog. Below is a full breakdown on how the site was recently redesigned for better monetization. Even with fewer than 100 visits to the site a day, it’s still successfully generating revenue, build up a mailing list and converting high on many product articles.
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How AsSeenOnTV-Products.net was Redesigned
1] Professional Wordpress Theme Since going live with the blog, I went through a few theme designs. The original theme was Thesis, and then I came across this excellent theme on WooThemes. As a member of WooThemes you will have access to all of their themes and can switch it up at any time. This whole design was done with NO customization. I just uploaded the theme, changed a few options and widgets, then it was set to go. The screenshot above is of an article on the blog, but the layout for the main page is even better.
2] AD Placement & Rotation Depending on the traffic, age and theme of your blog, advertising spots are an option. In this case, the affiliate program I use to push the As Seen on TV products had a ton of ad creative. Since the blog is all about similar products, it actually looks fairly decent with the amount of 125x125 ad spots shown, almost all of the readers will relate to the ad spots. The second benefit was that WooThemes created this theme with full ad space management built into the theme options, so I just had to list the urls and banners for top selling products. If you have a wordpress theme that doesn’t include customized ad management, I highly recommend OIO Publisher for selling and managing your ad space.
3] Aweber Mailing List This is the secret weapon and hidden goldmine for any blog. It’s one thing to have a blog with decent traffic, but getting readers to sign up for your mailing list is golden! You can see the subscribe form above is simple, but you can liven this up so much more. Check out the BONUS article below which shows how to convert new site visitors like crazy to join your mailing list. Setup a mailing list with Aweber for only $1.
4] Text Link Ads / Ninja Affiliate The greatest revenue generation from this site, is from affiliate links and sales of products. PeerFly affiliate network has over 75 different As Seen on TV products. I simply log in to my account, grab the affiliate code and link all product names to my affiliate url. The problem is that I have a ton of content on this site and it would take forever to manually go through
5 Design Tips for
Monetizing a Blog
#1Professional Theme
#2AD Placement &
Rotation
#3Aweber Mailing
List
#4 Text Link Ads
#5 Google Adsense
Monetization
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and edit every link. Also, what if an offer is removed from PeerFly, then I need to link it through another network. An amazing solution I came across is called Ninja Affiliate, which is a wordpress plugin. In short, with Ninja Affiliate, I can go into my Wordpress plugins, type the word that I want to make an affiliate link, add my url and click submit. Now all previous and future articles with a specific word like “Snuggie” (as seen in the example above), will now be linked to the Snuggie web site, where I will earn a commission on each sale.
5] Google Adsense Monetization There are so many ways to monetize a web site, Google Adsense is another one of them. Most well trained internet marketers like to stay away from Adsense because it really only makes a few pennies per click, but I like to list it on blogs when they first start out. Adsense can be great for mixing ads in with your content, and seeing where people like to click. Also, if you are writing about a topic or product that doesn’t have an affiliate program, Adsense might be your next best option.
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BONUS: Easily Convert New Visitors into Repeat Visitors
Let’s get back to #3 Aweber Mailing List again. This hidden gem may seem annoying to some bloggers and readers, but you can convert your one time visitors into repeat customers. Take a look at the screenshot below, it’s called a “Lightbox” and it’s one of the options available when setting up a mailing list with Aweber. You can visit AsSeenOnTV-Products.net to see it in action. You can easily create a lightbox subscribe form for your web site or blog in minutes. A lightbox is much different then a popup because you have setting within Aweber, that allows you to “fade in” the subscribe form a few seconds after the visitor hits your web site. Another important feature is being able to limit how many times your reader will see the popup, I limit mine to once every 30 days.
You can create your own custom subscribe form or use any of their ready made templates. The subscribe form I’m using on the screenshot shown has brought in over a 15% conversion rate. Even if you are only getting 100 visits a day to your site, this could be adding 450 new mailing list subscribers each month!
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Using Wordpress for Lead GenerationRemember when you signed up to receive this ebook? It was most likely through SixFigureAffiliateBlogging.com. This blog was created using the Unique Blog Design’s Theme called “Squeeze Page Theme”. Its purpose is to receive user email addresses, confirm their identity and allow them to download the end product. Once the user is confirmed, you can then follow up with newsletter mailings.
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Using the power of Squeeze Theme and Aweber, not only can your massively grow you blog’s readership, but you can built up your mailing list, which many bloggers refer to as their ATM machine.
The best way to use Aweber and Squeeze Theme is by creating a short mini series or ebook for your readers. If you decide to create a short mini series, you can setup an autoresponder through Aweber which will send out your articles through email every other day, or however you would like to schedule your mailings. You just need to write your content or ebook once, and Aweber will automatically send out your mailings to anyone that subscribes.
Unique Blog Designs not only designed my ZacJohnson.com site, but they also specialize in creating themes that allow blogs and affiliates to promote and expand their businesses.
Here’s a breakdown of their wordpress themes for lead generation.
Î Squeeze Theme - Build your email list using squeeze pages and your blog.
Î Affiliate Theme - Make money promoting affiliate offers using landing pages.
Î Sales Page Theme - Build dynamic and attractive sales pages to promote your products.
As a special bonus to all “Six Figure Affiliate Blogging” readers, Unique Blog Designs has offered a 25% coupon for any of their wordpress theme purchases. Simply click here and use the code “C1610”.
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6BlogMonetization Tips
Blog Monetization Tips
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Understanding How Readers View Your BlogNot all blogs are created equally, nor are they designed the same way. The design and placement of content on your blog can drastically affect how readers are navigating through your site and whether they are clicking on ad links and sponsors.
Google has done a write up for their Adsense users on the best locations to place advertising on a web site is. A chart was also created to better demonstrate the average visitor viewing a site. The light colors are considered “cool” areas and don’t receive much attention, while the darker colors are “hot” and where you would want to place your most important content.
Another excellent way to track what users are viewing and clicking on at your web site or blog, the service using heat map services. After joining their service and implementing your tracking, you’ll have access to full heat map tracking and see how many visitors went your blog and what exactly they are clicking.
Heat map tracking is very crucial for improving overall blog performance. Not only will you find what users are passing over, you can focus your efforts on what they are clicking on and give your visitors more of what they are looking for.
I’ve also written an article on ZacJohnson.com about removing distractions and increasing conversions on web sites and landing pages.
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Convert New Readers into a Mailing ListBlogs are a lot more personable than regular web sites. With that being said, I believe a one time light box (fade in / pop up window) subscribe form is a lot less obtrusive than flat out pop up advertisements.
First time visitors to ZacJohnson.com receive the following lightbox subscribe when they visit the site. You can change the settings, but I have it schedule to show once every 30 days per user. If the reader doesn’t want to subscribe, they can simply click the X or “Close”.
This light box method was created with Aweber.
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The benefit of adding a lightbox subscribe form to your site is the immediate call to action that is given to the user when they get to your site. The truth is, the majority of visitors to your site are going to leave and never come back without having clicked on anything. Using a lightbox subscribe form drastically improves your chances of having them join your mailing and continue reading your content.
For best results, offer your readers something of value. A free ebook, learning course or contest usually performs well.
Creating a lightbox subscribe from is quick and easy. You will need to have a mailing list setup with Aweber. When logged in to Aweber simply click Web Forms (on the main menu), Create Web Form, create a new subscribe form and change the “Type” to “lightbox”... then simply add the line of code to your blog.
Improve Ad Sales with a Blog Media KitJust having an “Advertise Here” button on your blog isn’t always enough. A lot of companies have a set advertising budget that they can spend per month. When selecting web sites and blogs they would like to advertise on, having a ready made media kit may be the difference in getting the sale or not.
In the beginning months of your blog, a media kit may not be necessary, but having one can save you a lot of time down the road. Instead of having to reply to every email request you get about advertising, you can simple respond with your media kit.
Important information to include in your media kit is blog traffic, demographics, a description of your blog, advertiser testimonials, contact information and ad rates.
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Grow a Twitter Following While You SleepAs mentioned earlier, having a Twitter following for your blog can provide a lot of free and quality traffic. Whenever a new post is made on your blog, you can set it up to automatically post to your Twitter stream. There are three ways to grow your Twitter account; over time, with software or using a Twitter following service.
Î Letting Your Twitter Following Grow by Itself This is obviously the most common way Twitter users manage their account, and that is simply by using Twitter and following users who they are interested is and vice versa. Another way to bring in traffic traditionally is to add a Twitter feed to your blog and a “follow me” button.
Î Using Twitter Following Software If you don’t want to wait forever to get a following on Twitter, software might be your best option. With programs like TweetAdder and Hummingbird, you can follow targeted Twitter users in hopes they will follow you back. Several web sites and blogs have built up Twitter accounts with several thousands of followers using these programs.
Î Buying Twitter Followers The last option, if you don’t want to wait for your Twitter account to build up on its own, or you don’t want to manage software, is to simply buy new followers. I did a case study on my blog on how well this is working vs. building your own account with followers.
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7TakingYour Blog to the Next Level
Taking Your Blog to the Next Level
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Things are going well. Your blog is established, you have new content being posted a few times a week, and you’re even making some good money… but now what? Bloggers and entrepreneurs alike, usually find themselves at a “tipping point” where they just can’t seem to get that next level.
Bring your blog to the next level by practicing the following:
Replicating the ProcessAsSeenOnTV-Products.net is an example of a real money generating blog. It’s not a cash cow that someone can retire off of, but it shows the complete process for creating a mini blog that can generate a few hundred dollars a month with no advertising costs.
In my particular case, I chose to focus on the “As Seen on TV” niche. Affiliate networks like PeerFly and ClickBooth, both have a wide range of these types of offers available. Just like I had my particular niche with this site, you can easily do the same for almost any topic, and the process is always the same.
1. Buy a Domain & Get Web Hosting
2. Setup Your Blog with a Quality Themes
3. Write or Outsource for Relevant Content
4. Build Affiliate Links for Product Sales
5. Create a Mailing List for Long Term Revenue
Once your site is created, you need to focus on getting traffic to your site. Focusing on only “free” and “viral” methods, you should do the following.
1. Create a Twitter Account & Facebook Fan Page
2. Setup RSS Autoposting to Twitter & Facebook
3. Increase Mailing List Subscribers with a Contest
4. Guest Post and Comment on other Relevant Blogs
5. Submit Articles to Article Directories
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After you’ve found success and want to promote your blog even more, the following advertising options always exist.
1. Increase Facebook Fans by Advertising on Facebook
2. Buy Banner Advertising on Relevant Blogs
3. Have other Niche Blogs do a Review on Your Site
4. Sponsor Contests & Giveaways on other Blogs
5. Search Engine Marketing with Pay Per Click
The more advertising doors you open for your blog, the more it will succeed. I would recommend not promoting or going for any paid advertising until you have established enough blog content and are listed in the search engines.
Outsourcing Your Blog ContentFrom blog design to content writers, nearly everything can be outsourced. You may find that your time is better off spent writing new content for your blog, then dealing with advertisers and invoices… or the other way around. It’s up to you to figure out what needs to be outsourced vs. what you should be working on.
I’ve written a post on my blog called “Building Your Own Outsourced Empire”, and it talks about many of the services I still use today to save time and outsource to others.
I’ve personally worked with virtual assistant services to write for a few blogs articles, but in the end the cost was just too high. Instead I prefer to find writing services like GetMeContent.com, or post job listings for interested writers. Problogger.net has an excellent job board for finding new writers, which I have also used many times. If you are going to outsource content, I highly recommend doing this for more informational and sales related blogs, vs. your own personal blogs or one you are looking to grow and brand for years to come.
Creating Your Own ProductStart thinking outside of just blog posting and on site advertising as a source of revenue. What else can you do to start generating revenue with your blog? Its obvious people are visiting and reading your blog because they like what you have to say and are offering. If you already have great blog content and new readers coming to the blog daily, then you must create an ebook or product for the blog!
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I’ve already mentioned the power of building a mailing list through Aweber, and how to create a squeeze page using the UBD Squeeze Page theme. If you aren’t currently taking advantage of these two killer tools, you are losing out!
At the very least, you should have created a free guide for your blog, even if it means compiling your best blog posts and content into a PDF file and offering it to your blog readers as an incentive to join your mailing list. Create a lightbox subscribe form with Aweber, and every new visitor to your will see a small pop up window offering them your free download, and all they need to do is join your mailing list. Should you create a paid product or service down the road, you will have a massive mailing list to announce your product. How many subscribers are you missing out on daily by not using Aweber to build a mailing list?
Don’t limit your blog to just free content and ebooks. What can you offer that others in your niche haven’t done yet? Where are your niche bloggers going for the best information and resources? Can you create something better and offer an exclusive member only forum, or even an actual product that customers can buy.
The bottom line is, your blog was created from basically nothing and you now have an established brand that people are interested in. Think beyond just affiliate marketing and blog advertising, what can you do next?
Buying and Selling Established BlogsLooking ahead... you now have an established blog which is getting nice traffic and earning money everyday, but you want to move on to bigger and better things, now what? Many bloggers are finding a full time business for themselves by creating small niche blogs, building them up with a bit of content and traffic, then selling them on auction sites like Flippa.com. In just the past few years, Flippa.com has been responsible for over $35 million worth of web site acquisitions. I’ve personally purchased blogs on this site for high five figures and new sales are being made every day. Once you’ve created your first site and were able to flip the sale for a quick profit, or a nice sum of investment money for your next project, there’s no reason why you couldn’t repeat the process over and over again.
Before I started blogging, I already had a ton of friends and contacts online that I had made over the years. It wasn’t until I went live with my blog that I started to get in touch with other big bloggers, speak with them on panels and get to be close friends with them.
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With that said, I constantly reach out to my fellow friends and bloggers, most of which are pushing over six figures a year just from blogging, to find out their answers to a myriad of specific questions.
SummaryWith new blogs being created every second, how are you supposed to compete? You will be building something unique that you are passionate about. Others will want to learn from what you have to say and want to read and share this new found information with others. Not all value comes in the form of financial gain. (Did I just say that?) I hope as you have read over this ebook and reviewed much of ZacJohnson.com you have seen and been convinced that much of what has been offered is targeted to teaching others about something I am passionate about. Blogging, Internet Marketing and yes, making money online. You have invested time to read over this guide, as I walked you through in detail the process of how to build a blog. Now it’s up to you, if you put in the sweat and tears, your blog will succeed, and be something you will be very proud of accomplishing. Good luck and please let me know of your success, I anticipate there will be quite a few to brag about!
Thank You!!!Thank you for reading and I hope you’ve found some great value in Six Figure Affiliate Blogging. The greatest compliment is hearing from my readers and the sharing of this ebook with your friends or online networks. We have a full line of advertising creatives and an affiliate program for anyone interested in earning commissions on spreading the word about Six Figure Affiliate blogging.
About the DesignerThe eBook cover and layout were designed by Matthew Bowe who has designed and collaborated on eBooks and Presentations for other notable internet marketers and entrepreneurs such as Jim Kukral, Dave Savage, Robert Stover and John Kirker. A Software Product Designer and Product Manager by profession, Matthew’s portfolio can be viewed here.
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DisclaimerThe information contained in this book is for informational and learning purposes only. The author and publisher of this book have made every attempt to ensure the accuracy of the information herein. Neither the author, Zac Johnson, or any individual services, companies or web site mentioned will be held liable for any damaged caused either directly or indirectly by the instructions contained in this book, or by any services or software mentioned within.
Results are not typical. Any amount of earnings disclosed in this book should be considered as an average. Entreprenuers, bloggers and web sites/blogs mentioned in this book are rare occurances of success and should not been seen as typical. Several web sites, services and networks are listed in this book. Click tracking is used to study which articles and chapters are most appreciated and gain the most attention. In full disclosure, it’s fair to state I may be benefiting financially or otherwise from everything you click on, read, or look at while reading this book.
COPYRIGHTAll rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means - electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or information storage and retrieval systems - without written permission from the author.
© 2010 SixFigureAffiliateBlogging.com by ZacJohnson.com
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8BONUSSix Figure Blogging Interviews
BONUS: Six Figure Blogging Interviews
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Six Figure Blogger InterviewsDuring the past decade plus, I’ve met a lot of people online and many of them have become close friends. I thought it would be an excellent resource to personally interview a few of them and how they’ve made six figures directly off their blog, or indirectly. The goal here was to select individuals who are making their money differently. In the articles below you will find profits being made from blog advertising, building a brand, creating a membership or building a product/service around the Wordpress platform.
Six Figure Blogger Interviews:
Î Jeremy Schoemaker (ShoeMoney.com)
Î Gary Vaynerchuk (GaryVaynerchuk.com)
Î Daniel Scocco (DailyBlogTips.com)
Î John Chow (JohnChow.com)
Î Adii Pienaar (WooThemes)
Î Brian Clark (CopyBlogger.com)
Î Tim Sykes (TimothySykes.com)
Î Al Carlton (Coolest-Gadgets.com)
Î David Klein (Purpose, Inc)
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JEREMY SCHOEMAKER
of SHOEMONEY.COM
Please tell us a little about yourself.
Sure, I am Jeremy Schoemaker. Husband, father, and small business owner. I started a mobile website called NextPimp.com in 2003 when out of the blue one day I got a call from Google asking me if I would run AdSense. I gave it a shot and was making good money pretty much out of the gate. From there I became a bit infatuated with how to make money online.
When did you start blogging and how did you get into it?
I just wanted a place to put my thoughts and experiences on. I started sharing lots of stuff I was learning about making money on the internet.
Besides financially, how has blogging helped your business and brand?
Blogging really helps you connect with your customers. It shows them you are human just like they are... and many times you can be a dumbass ... just like they are.
How have you incorporated affiliate marketing into your blog?
Occasionally I will talk about services or products I use. I will use affiliate links to the companies’ websites instead of direct linking.
In your opinion, what is the single best way to monetize a blog?
The absolute best way is to create a product. If you have a good RSS readership then obviously you have been giving a lot of value to your readers and they trust you.
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What would you recommend for a new blogger, that was only looking to blog for financial gain?
I would probably recommend they don’t start. I have never heard of a successful blogger who started because they wanted to make money from the blog. I have blogged for almost 7 years 1.2 posts a day on average. I wrote every day when nobody read the blog and someday if nobody reads again I will still blog my post per day.
Any recommended blogs or resources for bloggers looking to bring their blog to the next level?
I think problogger.net is the absolute best resource online for bloggers. Whether you want to make money or just blog problogger always has amazing content to help you.... and he publishes it every day.
Do you have any big announcements or upcoming projects you’d like to tell us about?
Well I just launched the ShoeMoney System and that is going to keep me busy ;) Its a step by step training system for making money on the internet... and with a 100% no questions asked money back guarantee if you think its not for you.
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GARY VAYNERCHUK
of WINELIBRARY.COM
Please tell us a little about yourself.
I was born in Belarus, in the former Soviet Union, and came to the US with my family in the late 1970s with basically nothing. I have two incredible parents that gifted me with amazing DNA that is responsible for everything I’ve been able to accomplish. I’m Director of Operations at Wine Library and winelibrary.com, host the video blog winelibrarytv.com, co-founded a consulting company called VaynerMedia with my brother AJ, and wrote the book Crush It!, which became a NY Times bestseller.
When did you start blogging and how did you get into it?
In late 2005 I saw the Internet becoming more social, and saw video blogs like Ze Frank’s The Show and Rocketboom taking off. I had missed out on the whole blogging thing because I’m not really a writer, but I knew this would be the right platform for me. After the holiday rush, I started Wine Library TV in February of 2006 and never looked back.
Besides financially, how has blogging helped your business and brand?
The show has brought a lot of attention to the business, but also to me. I started being invited to speak at conferences, and eventually to consult other personal brands and businesses.
How have you incorporated affiliate marketing into your blog?
Affiliate was never the direction I wanted to head with WLTV. I could have made plenty of money with affiliate links to wine.com, but I went for a brand equity strategy instead of direct monetization.
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In your opinion, what is the single best way to monetize a blog?
I wrote a lot about this in Crush It! As eyeballs continue to shift from print media to online platforms, there are billions of ad dollars up for grabs. Great bloggers that target a specific niche and have the chops stand to make plenty of money by selling ads.
What would you recommend for a new blogger, that was only looking to blog for financial gain?
Make sure you are blogging about something you are passionate about. My litmus test is this: Can you come up with 50 blog topics to write about off the top of your head?
Any recommended blogs or resources for bloggers looking to bring their blog to the next level?
I like to read TechCrunch and Mashable to keep up with all the latest developments.
Do you have any big announcements or upcoming projects you’d like to tell us about?
Right now I am really focused on building corkd.com, the wine social network which is becoming a big content play for wine related information.
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DANIEL SCOCCO
of DAILYBLOGTIPS.COM
Please tell us a little about yourself.
I was born in Brazil, and lived here until I was 16. After that I went to live in some other countries, including Italy and Chile. I started working full time on the Internet in 2006 (I was 21 at the time), and haven’t looked back ever since. It is a great lifestyle, and I really enjoy building websites and online businesses. In fact every day I wake up eager to turn the computer on.
When did you start blogging and how did you get into it?
Back in 2005 when I got my degree in International Economics I was left with a big document that I had prepared for my thesis. I had put a lot of effort into researching and writing it out, but I was sure that apart from myself, only two people would end up reading it: my teacher and my father….
Instead of letting the document sit idle and gather dust, therefore, I decided to chop it off into small articles and publish them on the web.
That is when I started researching about web publishing models, and when I came across blogging. I built my first blogs with raw HTML files, and after a while I discovered WordPress and became a loyal user.
After university I started working for a multinational company (inside the marketing department), but one year there was enough to make me realize that I didn’t want to work inside large companies. In fact I didn’t want to work for anyone else. I wanted to have my own business, so I quit my job and started working full time with my websites.
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Besides financially, how has blogging helped your business and brand?
I would say that blogging has been the kernel of my online business, for several reasons. First all blogging helped me to build authority. My content has always been derived from my experience building blogs and websites, and the readers would perceive that. Over time more and more people were willing to read and trust what I would write, which is great (and flattering at the same time).
Secondly, blogging allowed me to build a network of contacts, which is something extremely valuable for any business owner. As they say, it is often about who you know, and not what you know. These contacts allowed me to launch new websites, sell existing ones, launch new products and so on.
Finally, blogging also gave me a springboard to launch new projects. As of today I have 42,000 subscribers on Daily Blog Tips. This means that if I launch a product tomorrow I’ll be able to invite 42,000 to check it out. What is even better, these are 42,000 people who already have a relationship with me, so they are more likely to pay attention and give the product a shot.
How have you incorporated affiliate marketing into your blog?
Affiliate marketing is one of the main income sources I have on my blogs. The most effective way I have found to promote affiliate deals is when the product is very relevant to my audience. On those occasions I’ll write a honest review about it, and recommend my readers to check it out.
I believe that two factors play a role in the success of this technique: first of all you need to promote affiliate offers with moderation. If every other day you have a new affiliate plug your readers will suspect that you are just trying to squeeze as much money as possible out of your blog.
Secondly, you need to be completely honest and transparent on your reviews/recommendations. For example, try to actually use the product before writing the review, don’t mention only the positive aspects and so on.
Occasionally I also use affiliate offers to fill unsold advertising space. The conversion rate will be smaller here, but sometimes it beats AdSense, so it is a good alternative to have.
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In your opinion, what is the single best way to monetize a blog?
I believe the answer will depend on the blog in question. More specifically, it will depend on the niche of the blog, on its size, on the amount of time that the owner has to spend on the monetization strategies and so on.
For example, blogs that receive a very high percentage of their traffic from search engines, for example, tend to perform well with CPC ads (i.e., Google AdSense) and possibly affiliate marketing offers, depending on the keywords that are bringing the organic traffic (i.e., if the keywords manifest the intention to buy something).
Very large blogs, on the other hand, might become more profitable if the owner starts selling advertising space directly, or if he launches a related product.
In many cases the best monetization strategy will be a combination of the methods mentioned above. That is, the blog owner might use AdSense, complement it with some affiliate offers, and once the traffic grows he might also launch a product.
The key to find what works for you is to test, test and test.
What would you recommend for a new blogger, that was only looking to blog for financial gain?
First of all pick your niche wisely. Not too big, but not too small. If you are going to write the content yourself, it must be something you are passionate about. However, you also have the option to outsource the content, in which case you could choose any niche you want.
Once you know what niche you are going for, aim to dominate it. How? By publishing the best content out there. People must read your stuff and say “Wow, this is so good I’ll bookmark it. Heck, I’ll even blog and tweet about it to let my friends know!”.
Publishing that killer content alone won’t do the trick, however, because no one will know about your blog. You’ll therefore need to spend a lot of time promoting it as well. Use social media, network with fellow bloggers, join online forums relevant to your niche and so on.
Sounds like a lot of hard work? You betcha!
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Any recommended blogs or resources for bloggers looking to bring their blog to the next level?
Some blogs where you will find a lot of useful information (make sure to check their archives, too) include:
Problogger.net
Entrepreneurs-Journey.com
Copyblogger.com
QuickSprout.com
JohnChow.com
Taking the advice from people who have been there is important, but you must also follow your gut once in a while. The Internet is relatively young, and we’re all trying to figure it out still.
Do you have any big announcements or upcoming projects you’d like to tell us about?
I am working on a new project right now. It will be a web based service, but I can’t talk too much about it right now. Hopefully within 3 months or so I’ll have the beta version live. If you read my blog you’ll see the announcement there.
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JOHN CHOW
of JOHNCHOW.COM
Please tell us a little about yourself.
I’ve been on the Internet since 1998 and making a full time living at it since 1999. I went up with the Dot Com boom and suffered through the Dot Com crash. Learned a great deal from the experience. I’m best known for my blog, JohnChow.com.
When did you start blogging and how did you get into it?
I started my blog in December 2005 as a personal blog to update my friends and family on what was happening in my life. While much of the early post were “Day in life” articles, I also wrote a lot about making money online since that’s what I did. In September of 2006, I turned my blog into a real life case study on blog monetization. The goal was to make full time income with part time blogging. I defined full time income as $3,000 per month and part time blogging as 2 hours per day. I hit that goal in 4 months and the blog has continued to grow ever since.
Besides financially, how has blogging helped your business and brand?
The blog has pretty much turn me into a brand. The funny thing was, it wasn’t what I wanted to happen. If I were to do it over again, I would have done the case study with a brand new blog with more business domain name. As it stands now, I am the blog and the blog is me. The blog is worth over $1 million but it’s impossible to sell. And I wouldn’t sell it anyway.
How have you incorporated affiliate marketing into your blog?
The blog’s main income source is affiliate marketing. The second biggest source is advertising sales. The blog makes affiliate income by reviewing and recommending affiliate products, referring people to affiliate networks and capturing email leads.
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In your opinion, what is the single best way to monetize a blog?
The best way to make money from a blog is to run as many revenue channels as possible while still preserving the user experience. Most blog just run Google AdSense and nothing else. This could be because they don’t know all the options available. There are tons of ways to make money from blogging. You just have to find and tweak the best combination for you.
What would you recommend for a new blogger, that was only looking to blog for financial gain?
Treat your blog like a business. Because a blog can be started with zero dollars, many bloggers looking to make money online take an easy in and easy out approach. I started my blog for $8 (the cost of the domain name) but it makes more than many businesses that cost over $100,000 to start. My blog makes the income that it does because I treat it like a real business. Your attitude is the biggest factors between failure and success.
Any recommended blogs or resources for bloggers looking to bring their blog to the next level?
Besides yours and mine, I also recommend ProBlogger.net, Shoemoney.com, Copyblogger.com and BloggingTips.com
Do you have any big announcements or upcoming projects you’d like to tell us about?
Yes, I have a book coming out. It’s a real book that you can buy in bookstores. Look for it soon. I also have a new eBook coming out as well and I’m working on a blogging course. You’ll be able to find out more about these project on my blog. I’ll write about them when they’re about to hit the market.
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ADII PIENAAR
of WOOTHEMES.COM
Please tell us a little about yourself.
I’m Adii and I love business, strategy and amazing ideas. I’m a co-founder at WooThemes, as well as the founder behind Radiiate & The Rockstar Foundation.
When did you start blogging and how did you get into it?
I started blogging somewhere at the end of 2006, but probably only really got going mid-way through 2007. At that stage blogs were becoming more mainstream and it became easier to maintain a blog, so I figured that I’ve always had something to say and that I wanted to “follow” all the trendsetters in setting up my own blog.
Besides financially, how has blogging helped your business and brand?
I probably wouldn’t be where I am today had it not been for my blog elevating me to new levels and broadcasting my brand & reputation to an audience I never had before. I’ve also always tried to be a real human and very personal via my blog, so that I could mimic real-life, social networking & relationships, which has opened more doors for me than I could’ve expected when I started blogging.
What events lead up to you becoming the well branded Adii “Rockstar”?
Hard work and persistence in sharing my own ideas & experiences. Since my birthname is Adriaan Pienaar, I decided to use my nickname (Adii) instead and the Rockstar bit was just a little tongue-in-cheek branding exercise, which has worked out pretty well. I have however spent a lot of time broadcasting the “Adii Rockstar” brand via all of my communication online and as
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a result many people refer to me as “Adii Rockstar”, whereas I’d be happy just to be “Adii”.
What would you recommend for a new blogger, that would like to turn their name or passion into a brand?
Be personal and helluva persistent in broadcasting your own brand.
Any recommended blogs or resources for bloggers looking to bring their blog to the next level?
The only blog that really springs to mind is Darren Rowse’s ProBlogger, but there’s quite a few of them around, as it’s not difficult to find supposed blogging advice online. What is however more difficult is just being unique and doing your own thing when it comes to blogging & your personal brand.
WooThemes.com is already one of my favorite wordpress theme sites, what are we going to see next from the site?
More amazing WordPress themes, expansion into other CMS platforms and a few curveballs which no one expects.
Do you have any big announcements or upcoming projects you’d like to tell us about?
I’m working on quite a few niche projects on the radiiate-umbrella at the moment, with the most significant one probably being a new boutique venture capital firm, iincubate.
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JOSH MULLINEAUX of UNIQUEBLOGDESIGNS.COM
Please tell us a little about yourself and the UBD Team.
My name is Josh Mullineaux and I co-founded Unique Blog Designs with Nate Whitehill and Matthew Blancarte in August of 2007. Since then we have worked with large companies like Nike, MySpace, and Yahoo! along with some of the top internet marketers like John Reese, Frank Kern, and Tony Robbins. We have also worked a lot of the top bloggers and Affiliate Marketers such as John Chow, Zac Johnson and Yaro Stark. We are probably best known for our custom sites but our products have been used by over 40,000 people. All of our products are built using our platform of choice, WordPress.
When did you start doing blog design and how did you get into it?
We started another web design business in high school and have been doing blog design specifically, since early 2007.
How did you decide to focus on the affiliate marketing niche to kick off your blog design work?
Our custom design work was originally targeted at small to medium sized businesses. Only after re-designing John Chows blog did we decide to focus our marketing efforts in the make money online niche. Our first major marketing tool was specifically built for Affiliate Marketers because we felt there was a huge lack of awesome landing page creation tools for WordPress. With all of the Google slapping that has been going on we felt that our audience could benefit from WordPress tremendously.
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Besides financially, how has blogging helped your business and brand?
Blogging has really made our business possible. It is the networking and community aspect of our site and our partner’s sites that have grown our business.
In your opinion, what is the single best way to monetize a blog?
We always recommend building an email list from your blog. Building an email list is an essential element of your online marketing arsenal. We have found that promoting targeted products to a well served email list, converts the better than any other type of online product promotion.
With so much competition in the blog design niche, how did UBD stand out from the rest?
One thing that we always stress with any project is the specific goals of the project. There are a lot of really talented designers out there but very few have real marketing experience. We know that when our clients are putting as much money, time and effort into a project that they want return on investment. The best way to have the clients see that return is for us to have the objectives of the project clearly defined. We also work with the clients in providing consultation because we’ve been there! We pride ourselves on the fact that our clients are more successful after doing a project with us.
Do you think a new blogger should start off with a custom theme, or wait til they are more established?
I think it is important to have a budget in mind when starting the site and work within that at first. When you have no revenue/profit, it is hard to afford a full custom design at $3,500+. This is why most people elect to start with an inexpensive theme that provides easy customization. Then, once the site grows, redesign it using a professional design firm.
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Any recommended blogs or resources for bloggers looking to bring their blog to the next level?
The list would be much too long if I tried to list all of the resources here :) The best resource that any of us have is Google. I often think of Google as my second brain I use it so much. Any question that you have, Google has the answer.
Do you have any big announcements or upcoming projects you’d like to tell us about?
We are really working on trying to make our products the best internet marketing products available for WordPress, so just watch for the development and the companies that are going to co-brand our products.
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BRIAN CLARK
of COPYBLOGGER.COM
Please tell us a little about yourself.
I’m the father of two, husband of one, co-founder of DIY Themes, Scribe SEO & Unglued Media, and founder of Copyblogger.
When did you start blogging and how did you get into it?
I started using blogs as part of my content and marketing mix around 2001, but I really didn’t start blogging “proper” until just before I started Copyblogger. But from a content standpoint, blogging is not much different from the ezines people started in the late 90s.
Besides financially, how has blogging helped your business and brand?
Well, it ultimately tues back to financial ultimately, but the ability to build a reputation that leads to speaking gigs and joint ventures has been really valuable.
How have you incorporated affiliate marketing into your blog?
I’ve done affiliate marketing since 1998 as well, back in the early days. So it was a natural that I would incorporate affiliate offers into the mix at Copyblogger. We’ve actually scaled back on affiliate marketing recently, just because we have so many of our own products and services to offer.
In your opinion, what is the single best way to monetize a blog?
Your own products or services. But if you’re not there yet, affiliate offers can tell you a whole bunch about what your audience is interested in, and more importantly, what they will buy.
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What would you recommend for a new blogger, that was only looking to blog for financial gain?
Well, there’s nothing wrong with that. But I do see that people who rush to monetize too quickly or too aggressively end up trading dollars for pennies. Building up an audience first and earning their trust will pay you way more overall. Unfortunately, not many seem to have the patience.
Any recommended blogs or resources for bloggers looking to bring their blog to the next level?
The greatest resource any blogger has is observation. Social media allows you to see unfiltered conversations that indicate market trends, existing product desire, and more. Paying close attention to your audience and your broader niche is the most important thing you can do.
Do you have any big announcements or upcoming projects you’d like to tell us about?
We’re in development on our third software project that will complete the set together with Thesis and Scribe. Until then, I’m just focusing on expanding our customer base overall and keeping things running as smoothly as possible.
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TIMOTHY SYKES
of TIMOTHYSYKES.COM
Please tell us a little about yourself.
I was an obsessive high school tennis player who was fortunate enough to be injured badly enough during the stock market bubble in 1999 that I was forced to sit out for an entire year which led me to stock trading. Since I had two big casts on my arms, I couldn’t do much more than type so my parents opened a brokerage account and gave me control of my Bar Mitzvah gift money, $12,415, thinking I’d lose it all and that it would be a great lesson (tough love I pass down to my students too). Instead I turned that into $1.65 million by 2002 and started a hedge fund in 2003, my senior of college....and the education was more than they ever imagined.
While I was ranked the #1 short bias hedge fund manager 2003-2006, my hedge fund never got past $3 million in assets (my personal wealth accounted for roughly half the fund) because my trading strategy, while great for turning a few thousand into a few million, simply isn’t scalable into the $5+ million range. Since I wanted to grow fund assets, I had been seeking press for several months and eventually got featured in Trader Monthly Magazine’s “Top 30 Under 30” for 2006. While I was on CNBC discussing the award, a TV producer caught my interview and liked it enough to cast me for one episode his upcoming documentary “Wall Street Warriors”.
I ended up starring in 5 of the 6 episodes of the first season and the show has now aired in 14 countries with weird young males becoming the series’ most ardent fans. Thanks to the show detailing my stock trading success, I received thousands of emails from people, mostly those weird young males (seriously, I wish more than 2 females watched the show!) wanting to learn more. That led me to answer the incessant emails by writing the book “An American Hedge Fund: How I Made $2 Million & Created A Hedge Fund”, which led to my promoting that book with my blog TimothySykes.com
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Since the book and blog took off while my hedge fund wasn’t doing much, I shut down the fund and created a publishing company, BullShip Press, LLC, to cut through all the BS out there being created every day by frauds and snakeoil salesmen to teach people my proven trading strategy. Not focused on marketing, focused on something I knew was real and replicable.
I am now a full-time/obsessive blogger with 2,000 paying subscribers to my “TIMalerts” real-time trade alerts newsletter and 10 instructional DVD packages detailing every ounce of what I know. In late 2007, I opened an online discount brokerage account with Thinkorswim returning to my $12,415 Bar Mitzvah roots in order to repeat my feat detailing every step of the way on my blog. Two years and 3,000 blog posts later, that account has grown to $125,000+ making me the #1 trader out of 45,000+ on Covestor.com, a website that verifies account performance.
When did you start blogging and how did you get into it?
Shoot! Perhaps I should’ve read all the questions before already answering this in question #1. But this illustrates how I trade stocks and run my blog business--only focusing on the task at hand, which is usually a poor strategy for long-term business success, but in the financial world, it’s dead on the right way to think. After all, 70% of professional investors fail to beat the overall market each year and 90% of traders lose money due to their lack of focus on the one task at hand: invest and trade profitably. They’re too busy with investor meetings, networking, living life, blah blah blah excuses excuses blah blah blah!
Blogging is little different--I didn’t initially plan on having all these subscribers and students, a daily newsletter and 10 instructional DVD packages, it just happened one step at a time. The blog was created to promote my book. My book wasn’t technical enough so it led to my first DVD “PennyStocking” (6 hours). That first DVD is basic, but it’s not comprehensive so I had to detail more of my strategy in more DVDs such as crowd favorite “PennyStocking Part Deux” (6 hours) and “TIMfundamentals Part Deux” (12 hours long). Once people learned my strategy through the DVDs, they wanted to see it work in real-time which led to my TIMalerts real-time newsletter.
I trade stocks and create products one step at a time, always adapting to what works while discarding what does not.
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Besides financially, how has blogging helped your business and brand?
Blogging makes me an infinitely better trader as I am much more disciplined and hard-working because I know 2,000 people are watching day in and day out. It’s sometimes difficult for successful traders to stay constantly motivated because we tend to hit home runs every now and then and after you hit a home run, you really want to take a break, go out and celebrate. After all, you work hard, you deserve it.
Considering how much daily blogging work I have--I not only share my trades, but also create research, watchlists, videos and have a chatroom--the last thing I EVER want to do is go out hard and celebrate. Now it’s more about building a successful brand and helping as many people as I can which keeps me in check.
What I’ve learned from blogging over the past 2 years has also inspired me to create Investimonials.com, a kind of TripAdvisor/Yelp for the finance world because I’ve learned how much fraud and deceit there is in this joke of an industry. Forget my little personal trading education brand (remember, it’s good to learn how to turn a few thousand into a few million, but I can never teach anyone how to make more than that...aka it’s limiting), there’s far greater demand for a widely-used user-based ratings agency that will help consumers discover the best vs. the worst financial products like brokers, newsletters, websites, blogs and software.
How have you incorporated affiliate marketing into your blog?
It’s been on my to do list for a very long time. I do have an affiliate program, but I haven’t had the time to reach out to all 285 of my affiliates the way I should. I don’t even have those magical long sales sheets that convert sales so well, I just have 3,000+ blog posts and 20,000 testimonials mixed in on pretty much every one. I think on $1+ million in sales in 2009, I paid affiliate commissions of $10,000 or so. I need to get organized in the affiliate department and when I do, I know it’s the MoneyReign Man himself who I will be calling first.
I know, I know, I’m a bad product-selling blogger, but you forget that unlike just about every other internet marketer out there, I have created and refined my personal education over the past
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decade and I never meant for anyone but myself to be using it. So I am still in the product development phase, learning what works best and worst for others and adapting my product line to meet those specifications.
When I do launch a hardcore affiliate program--not only for TimothySykes.com but also for Investimonials.com--it will surpass anything else in all the financial product world, which itself is mainly a sham (as many reviews on Investimonials have already begun to indicate).
In your opinion, what is the single best way to monetize a blog?
I only get 3,000 daily visitors so compared to other seven figure bloggers, I know my traffic is abysmal. But I’m not in it for meaningless hits, sharing email lists and JV partnerships with other marketers. Since I deal in the corrupt financial products space, I don’t trust anybody else so I’ve had to make it all on my own. It sounds rough, but I believe it’s a gift, not a curse, since going it alone is the surest way to success as it forces you to work harder than your team-playing competitors...and if you do end up failing you have nobody to blame but yourself....which should motivate you even more never to let that happen.
If you have a blog, that means you think you’re worth listening to. If you are worth listening to, you should have premium products of your own and use the blog to tease those products. Marketing products of others’ is fine and it provides a decent income to hundreds, if not thousands, of internet blogger/marketer wannabes, but the real test is if you’re willing to go out on a limb and create something yourself! My income and personal fulfillment really only kicked in once I began proving day in day out that my own products could help educate and enrich people far better than anybody else’s.
What would you recommend for a new blogger, that was only looking to blog for financial gain?
I’d say grow a soul. Those who are in it only for the money might succeed, but they create little good and are destined to one day discover their lives are unfulfilling and meaningless. Drugs, alcohol and depression are typical endgames for such overly-greedy scumbags. I mean this basically sums up the finance industry and look how that’s going!
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C’mon you greedy little children, life is about more than just money, grow up and do something both profitable and useful. Obviously, I’ve been very fortunate over the years so I’m just an overly-successful ex-greedy scumbag talking here, but I’ll tell you it’s not the money that brings me the greatest satisfaction--it’s the knowledge that I’m helping educate thousands of people. Their emails, notes and little gifts are the greatest feeling in the world, far greater the feeling I get from their PayPal payments...although I do like playing the “Notification Of Payment Received” game (whenever I am notified of another sale, I try to guess the price of that sale...see I’m greedy too, I know how this game works).
Any recommended blogs or resources for bloggers looking to bring their blog to the next level?
Read and learn from everyone: IncomeDiary.com, JohnChow.com, ShoeMoney.com, ProBlogger.net, ZacJohnson.com, Dan Kennedy, Frank Kern, Yanik Silver...I haven’t even had the time (the stock market rarely closes!) to really dig through everyone’s materials, but if I was just starting out, I would.
The tools I use: PayPal, WordPress, Wishlist, MailChimp, Sitemet, Chartbeat, Google Analytics, Wistia, Screenr, TxtWire, Trumpia, AffiliateShop, SeamlessWeb, MaxDelivery.com, iPhone, iPad, American Express Plum, Virgin America, ParaChat, StumbleUpon Ads, RackSpace, Aweber, Time Warner Cable, ScreenFlow, Macbook Pro, Skype, Facebook, Twitter, Covestor, Youtube, Gmail, GetSponge, Alexa, Compete.com, Quantcast, InvestingChannel, Adsense, BM KeywordLink
Do you have any big announcements or upcoming projects you’d like to tell us about?
Investimonials.com just passed its 5,000 financial product added and 3,000 user reviews all in the first 4 months of operation. In the coming years, I will not sleep until everyone shares honest reviews of everything financial. We just added an entertainment (Wall Street movies & TV shows), a banking category and within a few more days, we’ll have 200+ prop firms listed. The days of Bernie Madoff are over and the future of finance is all about transparency.
TimothySykes.com now has 4 newsletters, 10 DVDs and an amazing new answers page http://answers.timothysykes.com/ where people can see 300+ Q&As and ask me even more questions. Bring it onnnnnnnnnnn!
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AL CALRTON
of COOLEST-GADGETS.COM
Please tell us a little about yourself.
Hey everyone, my name is Al Carlton and I’ve been blogging and pushing various affiliate schemes for the past 5 year, I quit the 9-5 rat race just over 3 years ago.
When did you start blogging and how did you get into it?
I started with a personal blog around 5 years ago but that has long since bitten the dust and taught me an important lesson about doing regular backups (well actually back then it taught me to do a minimal of one backup, oops). I launched www.coolest-gadgets.com in August 2005 mainly because it was a niche I had an unhealthily geeky obsession with, I now run a dozen blogs and various forums and affiliate sites.
When starting your Coolest-Gadgets.com blog, did you ever expect it to earn what it does today?
When I first started I knew it had huge traffic potential but wasn’t sure how huge or what revenue to expect. Over the years I’ve experimented with various revenue streams and different optimizations and at times it has certainly exceeded expectations.
How have you incorporated affiliate marketing into your blog?
On CG we now have dedicated team of writers and their criteria is to write about products that are cool, only around 10% of the products we share have an appropriate affiliate scheme. So we use a custom plugin to convert, cloak and track any affiliate products automagically, that way the writers are totally unbiased with what they write and we never accidentally miss an affiliate opportunity.
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In your opinion, what is the single best way to monetize a blog?
It varies from blog to blog. On my totally product based blogs (like www.coolest-toys.com) we’d do well with affiliate products whilst with the more viral but not so much product based sites (www.foolish-gadgets.com springs to mind) we’d do better with CPM advertisings. I also do very well with Adsense though that does seem to off dropped a lot over the years.
What would you recommend for a new blogger, that wants to create their own product reviews blog?
Get started as soon as possible. You will learn much more be doing than you ever will be reading about somebody else doing (though reading alongside obviously helps).
Any recommended blogs or resources for bloggers looking to bring their blog to the next level?
I’ve blogged about my experiences over on Self Made Minds http://selfmademinds.com however ProBlogger http://www.problogger.net is one of greatest resources for bloggers of all levels, also check Chris Garrett http://www.chrisg.com. From the affiliate side of things check out your very own Zac (http://zacjohnson.com) and Shoemoney (http://www.shoemoney.com), then a bit of Yoast http://yoast.com for SEO and cool plugins.
Do you have any big announcements or upcoming projects you’d like to tell us about?
Yes I do and I’ll be sure to spam you with the when they are ready for public consumption
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DAVID KLEIN
of PURPOSEINC.COM
Please tell us a little about yourself and how you first got into blogging.
I am an entrepreneur, a chiropractor, and a game changer. I have been the social director to the internet business world, as well as hired gun, and confidant to many of the biggest and baddest in the internet world. Currently I help companies with facebook advertising, reputation management, and unique “out of the box” marketing. With a few phone calls, I have helped some of the biggest companies, solve their biggest problems. I am known as Dr. David Klein outside of the internet world, and first became well known amongst the internet geeks when Matt Cutts of Google put me out as a poster child for local marketing, and how to get links the white hat way, with my marketing of BodyABCs.com. I have helped some of the largest companies on the internet such as Facebook, Globalizer and Azoogle with their online marketing. I have also assisted internet marketing legend Jeremy Schoemaker with his Elite Retreat, and other projects. I puts on some of the most sought after events in the internet entrepreneurial world including the Purpose Inc. thinktank.
Your original profession is a chiropractor, but how did you get into online marketing?
It originally started when I made a set of cartoon books that explained chiropractic better than it had ever been explained before. Understanding chiropractic is a life changing moment for most people. I took this book I had written “What You Need To Know”, and turned it into part of our website at BodyABCs.com. I then imagined google would immediately see how important this was, and list it at the top for chiropractic. After some time seeing that not only was it now ranking well for chiropractic, but it was not even ranking well in google for “san diego chiropractic” I began a long road to discover what to do. I always go to the best experts I can find, so along the way ended up getting to be friends with guys like Matt Cutts, who has an enormous amount
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to do with what is and is not shown in google, Matt Mullenweg one of the guys who co-created wordpress, Jeremy Schoemaker, the guy behind the Shoemoney system, Yanik Silver a crazy successful marketer, and of course, you, Zac Johnson!
Besides financially, how has blogging helped your business and brand?
BodyABCs.com developed tons of links as a result of Matt Cutts suggestion to put a blog there, and it made me more famous in the chiropractic world. In the internet entrepreneur world, the blog allowed me to write about the movers and shakers, and allowed me to get to be friends with them. It also just flat out makes you famous. It also gets you amazing customer service. When you have trouble with a product, you can simply say to the company, I have a blog read by up to 30,000 people per month. Can you just get this fixed? Things usually get handled properly then.
Tell us about ThinkTank, how and why it was created and if it would have had the same success without your blog.
Thinktank fills a niche that is not filled otherwise. It and the blog feed off of each other, and neither would exist without the other. The internet rock stars, when they go to the conferences are inundated with people asking them for help. I wanted to give them
a safe place where they can just be themselves, knowing what happened and what they said there would stay quiet. It allows us as a group to share ideas for three days and help each other with our projects. Oh, and what is it? It is three days of the best food, and open bar, top guys int he industry, hanging out in a park at the beach, surfing, sports, and laughing till it hurts.
On your blog you have a ton of news sources that you or your blog have been featured in, how can other bloggers accomplish the same?
Do something notable. Some of them like when the New York Times, or the Wall Street Journal interviewed me, it was because I have expertise in facebook advertising. Others were simply because I did something notable like surfing a tsunami. (This is actually true, although it was tiny.)
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What advice do you have for anyone that wants to make a business out of blogging.
First off do it, and do it consistently. Most bloggers burn out after about 6 months of blogging. If someone asks me advice or wants help with their blog, I generally let them know to blog for 6 months first, before even talking to me about it. If you have a little money to spend, run some facebook ads targeted to the target market of your blog to generate the first readers. I am putting up a site in the next weeks called, BlueAndWhiteAds.com about facebook advertising. If someone bugs me over there, I will put up a free video on how to do this.
Any recommended blogs or resources for bloggers looking to bring their blog to the next level?
ZacJohnson.com of course. Then for a nice wide variety read, MattCutts.com, Shoemoney.com, QuickSprout.com, InspiredStartup.com.
That list above puts you following some of the smartest, most influential people in the industry.
Do you have any big announcements or upcoming projects you’d like to tell us about?
BlueAndWhiteAds.com should be within a few months, the leading information source abut facebook advertising.
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JOEL COMM
OF JOELCOMM.COM
Please tell us a little about yourself.
I’ve been building websites since 1995. Since that time, I’ve build dozens of sites, sold many sites, written a number of best-selling books, created software and phone applications and enjoyed an international speaking career.
When did you start blogging and how did you first get into it?
I launched JoelComm.com in 2003. My original intent was for it to be a personal blog where I would share my life experiences, write movie reviews, discuss my travels and such. While I still do that, it has become more business oriented.
When starting your blog, did you ever expect it to grow to where it is today?
It was originally created for fun. To this day, I don’t really monetize my blog that much. I run few ads and keep it free of AdSense. It is interesting to see which articles draw the most views and comments!
You’ve released a lot of products and learning courses over the years. How much of an impact has the success of these products had because of your blog?
My blog has always supported my product launches to some degree. But I would say my emails have a much greater affect on sales.
How have you incorporated affiliate marketing into your blog?
I will promote other people’s products or services from time to time.
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In your opinion, what is the single best way to monetize a blog?
For someone getting started, AdSense is the no-brainer. But once you get good at creating content, there are many ways to monetize. Kontera, Chitika, Text links, Affiliate links, banner ads, are all good methods of generating revenue.
What would you recommend for a new blogger, that wants to create their own brand or presence in blogging?
Select a topic that has meaning for you. Don’t go chasing niches that appear to be profitable and forsake your own passions, knowledge and skills. If you focus on your own passions you will be able to provide more value for your readers. You will also maintain interest for the long term.
Any recommended blogs or resources for bloggers looking to bring their blog to the next level?
Copyblogger, tylercruz.com, garryconn.com, shoemoney.com, johnchow.com, and of course, zacjohnson.com :-)
Do you have any big announcements or upcoming projects you’d like to tell us about?
My next book, Kaching: How to Build an Online Business that Pays and Pays launches July 8th. It’s a great book for newbies wanting to make money online, and the only way to get a physical “KaChing Button”!
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NEIL PATEL
OF QUICKSPROUT.COM
Please tell us a little about yourself.
My name is Neil Patel and I a serial entrepreneur, blogger and a naïve investor. I’ve been an Internet entrepreneur since I was 16 years old and there isn’t anything that I love more than creating online businesses that are game changing. My first real business was an Internet marketing agency and since then I have created a handful of other companies including Crazy Egg and KISSmetrics.
When did you start blogging and how did you first get into it?
I started blogging around 5 years ago and my first blog was on Internet marketing. I created that blog because it helped drive clients to my Internet marketing agency. I stopped blogging on that blog 3 years ago and since then I have been blogging on Quick Sprout about entrepreneurship because I want to share what I have learned through my experiences.
When starting your blog, did you ever expect it to grow to where it is today?
I did expect the blog to be popular, as I kind of knew what I was doing when I started it (it was my second blog). I wish it would be a lot more popular, but I have to do a better job of blogging on a regular basis.
You are co founder with three different companies, have worked with many large and well known companies, and a voice in the industry... how has having your own blog helped expand your voice and acquire new business?
The blog has helped me get a bigger audience and new customers. This is the main way I make money from my blog and the key to this is to just write really good content.
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You don’t blog often, but when you do you usually get a couple hundred comments. What’s the secret to your comment success!
I respond to every comment. That is my secret. ;-) By responding to every comment it encourages people to come back and comment because they notice that I am taking the time and effort to communicate with them.
How have you incorporated affiliate marketing into your blog?
I haven’t incorporated affiliate marketing. I make money by driving people to my software companies and although I act like an affiliate I don’t take any commission, as it would be like taking money out of your own pocket and then putting it back in.
In your opinion, what is the single best way to monetize a blog?
People are used to ads, so they don’t monetize as well. If you offer your readers services or products that they need, you can make an affiliate commission. This is the best way to make the highest revenue per visitor.
What would you recommend for a new blogger, that wants to create their own brand or presence in blogging?
Write really good content. And not just the content that people can find anywhere, such as news. But write really detailed information that can’t be found anywhere else. The informational also has to be actionable…
Any recommended blogs or resources for bloggers looking to bring their blog to the next level?
There is only one blog that people need to read. Zacjohnson.com ;-). Other than that I would read johnchow.com and shoemoney.com.
Do you have any big announcements or upcoming projects you’d like to tell us about?
KISSmetrics.com is launching this month.
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SHAWN COLLINS
OF AFFILIATETIP.COM
Please tell us a little about yourself.
I got started as both an affiliate and affiliate manager in 1997. I spent ten years managing affiliate programs, and have been an affiliate the whole time. In 2003, I co-founded the Affiliate Summit conference with Missy Ward, and we’re about to host our 14th Affiliate Summit, which takes place August 15-17, 2010 in New York City.
When did you start blogging and how did you first get into it?
I started on Blogger in February 2004 with infrequent posts on affiliate marketing (the first: http://blog.affiliatetip.com/archives/the-fight-over-tight-affiliate-control/), and moved on to using Movable Type (MT) several months later. I started, because I wanted an alternative to putting all of my content in somebody else’s forum, and while I was publishing some newsletters, I wanted to do something where people could publicly respond.
When starting your blog, did you ever expect it to grow to where it is today?
No, I didn’t imagine blogging itself would take off as it has. As my blog gained momentum, I invested more time in it. At this point, I think it’s been four or so years that I’ve blogged every single day without interruption. I’m a big believer in the importance of consistency.
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You’ve been in the affiliate and internet marketing space for a very long time, how much of an impact have affiliate / marketer bloggers made in the industry compared to before blogging went mainstream?
I think blog software as a CMS has revolutionized affiliate marketing. At first, I looked at blogs as a type of affiliate, but using WordPress and other platforms as a CMS has become increasingly popular. In the past couple of years, I’ve moved all of my sites over form being hand-coded to running them on WordPress.
How have you incorporated affiliate marketing into your blog?
I was using affiliate marketing on my blog from the time I left Blogger for MT. At first, I was going with banners and buttons, but eventually shifted to contextual text links. I’ve used various programs to automate the links, but came back around to manually insert the links, so they are products and services I can hand-pick to promote.
In your opinion, what is the single best way to monetize a blog?
Banners and buttons are a waste of time. Pop-ups, sliders, etc. are a bad experience for visitors. I think the soft sell is the best sell - relevant text links.
What would you recommend for a new blogger, that wants to create their own brand or presence in blogging?
I’d urge them to blog about something where they have a passion - a topic they will love six months from now, so they won’t abandon their work before it takes off. I’ve mostly followed my own advice, but there are also many blogs I started to monetize on a niche and quickly lost interest.
Any recommended blogs or resources for bloggers looking to bring their blog to the next level?
I think the most useful resource is Google Alerts, so bloggers can set up alerts for all of the terms relevant to what they are doing. This can act as a source of posts for their blog on a regular basis.
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Also, I would suggest making the full posts available via RSS. Some people won’t bother coming back to your blog all the time, so make it as easy as possible for them to consume your content.
Do you have any big announcements or upcoming projects you’d like to tell us about?
My main focus is Affiliate Summit East 2010, taking place August 15-17 in NYC. Then, there will be an Affiliate Summit unConference in Orlando on September 27, followed by Affiliate Summit West 2011 on January 9-11, 2011 in Las Vegas.
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JONATHAN VOLK
OF JONATHANVOLK.COM
Please tell us a little about yourself.
My name is Jonathan Volk. I’m a “super affiliate”, blogger, speaker and online entrepreneur. I have been blogging about internet marketing and making money online over at http://www.jonathanvolk.com since 2007. I just recently launched two projects: My Free Affiliate Marketing Guide and my complete guide to advertising on Facebook.
You can read more about me over at http://www.jonathanvolk.com/about
When did you start blogging and how did you first get into it?
I started blogging back in 2005ish on a blog that no longer exists. It was in 2007 that I decided to blog about my journey to making money online and that is when I started JonathanVolk.com. I have now been blogging for over 3 years, and am loving it. Blogging is one of the parts of my business that is not as profitable as the other areas, but I enjoy it too much to not have it be a part of my business.
When starting your blog, did you ever expect it to grow to where it is today?
Not at all. Really it was just for fun. It was not until it started to grow to 1000+ RSS readers that I began to realize the potential.
You’ve now established yourself as one of the top affiliate bloggers. What advice do you have for others looking to bring their blog to their top of their niche?
When I first started blogging, I didn’t take the blog seriously. Sure I would blog regularly but I didn’t treat the blog like my other projects. I highly recommend, if you’re going to blog, that
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you research some of the blog tip websites like problogger.net, dailyblogtips.com, and bloggingtips.com. In order for you to really take your blog to it’s full potential, you need to utilize the resources that are out there.
After successfully launching your Affiliate Marketing 101 guide and Facebook Ads Guide, do you feel either of these products would have had the same success if you weren’t an established blogger and voice in this niche?
I believe a huge reason these products are a success is because I have been able to build a solid following over 3 years. Now, when I launch anything, I have instant access to tell tens of thousands of people who are interested in making money online.
How have you incorporated affiliate marketing into your blog?
I use affiliate marketing to make money with my affiliate marketing blog. When there is a product or service that I like I usually make a post or two about it with my affiliate links. This has allowed me to earn a nice blog income - the single biggest source of income from my blog.
In your opinion, what is the single best way to monetize a blog?
I would say there is no “best” way, only what’s best for you. Some of the ways that I think work best are to use affiliate marketing, sell ads directly, or create your own product.
What would you recommend for a new blogger, that wants to create their own brand or presence in blogging?
If you want to make a blog for more than just a hobby, you should focus your efforts on learning how to build a good blog. This includes installing an email capture, setting up your RSS on feedburner, blogging regularly, making guest posts, etc. Like I mentioned above, check out the blogs about blogging so you can learn how to be the best blogger there is right from the start.
My wife blogs over at BachmansSparrow.com. She has taken blogging seriously and with my guidance from the things I have
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learned about blogging, she has been able to build quite a blog following in under a year.
Any recommended blogs or resources for bloggers looking to bring their blog to the next level?
Mentioned above. ;)
Do you have any big announcements or upcoming projects you’d like to tell us about?
I am going to be launching my own coaching forum shortly for Facebook Advertising. This is a service that will go along side my guide to advertising on facebook. I’m really excited about it as it’s going to the be the first forum of it’s kind. :)
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IAN FERNANDO
OF IANFERNANDO.COM
Please tell us a little about yourself.
I am an affiliate marketer and blogger. I also consider myself an online entrepreneur because I tend not to stick to one aspect of making money online. I like to diversify my online portfolio as much as I can.
I started off as a blogger and info marketer and merged into an affiliate marketer. My blog at IanFernando.com discusses my success and failures in the online space. Whether it be about blogging, affiliate marketing, entrepreneurship, or online marketing in general.
I also speak at different engagements including meetups and conferences such as Affiliate Summit. I have been published in several magazines in the entreprenerial and affiliate industry. I enjoy talking to other people about the online space and the potential it can bring to users.
Even though I have had many success, I worked day and night to reach my goals.
When did you start blogging and how did you first get into it?
I started blogging in 2007. I got into the blogging space when I first started to try to make money online. I searched on the internet how to make money online and realized blogging was in its prime. I also came across John Chow’s blog and his testimonial about making money online. I was amazed at the monthly numbers he was showing.
My blog started out as a journal with entries written about how I was trying to make it into the online space. I talked about how I utilized sites to gain traction, my attempts at trying to network online, and my first dollar. Even though my first couple of posts were at a beginners level, you can see the growth of my blog as to who I am today.
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When starting your blog, did you ever expect it to grow to where it is today?
No, I was thinking it would get traction but not to where everyone is visiting and leaving comments and emailing me on a daily basis. I would expect to get some visibility but not gain popularity.
You’ve released a lot of products and networking events off your blog. How much of an impact has the success of these products had because of your blog?
My blog has hugely impacted the success of these products because my audience sees the important information I am trying to share with them. They already trust me to an extent where they know who I am as a person and know whatever I push via my blog are my own words, thoughts, and products that are legit—not just made or said to make money or scam.
As well, my products also get traction right away with certain keywords. It easily gets ranked because of the popularity and ranking I get with Google via my blog.
Readers of any blog would love to meet the writer and the person behind the blog. Anytime they get an opportunity to meet the person behind the blog via local meetups or at conference it builds that relationship even stronger.
How have you incorporated affiliate marketing into your blog?
When I talk about tools I use, I mention and attach affiliate links to the post. If it is a resource I use and utilize, I share my experience and I append a link. It only makes sense to get a commission out of it if I an referencing a tool I use everyday.
I have also done product reviews on my blog. By doing reviews of a product I incorporate the affiliate links within the post. Similar to the tools I use, I share my own aspect of the product from my point of view helping the user decide if they should get the product I reviewed or not.
Other ways I utilize the blog for affiliate marketing is I turn keywords into affiliate links and utilize the unused banner space into affiliate banner links.
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In your opinion, what is the single best way to monetize a blog?
I honestly think it is affiliate marketing. The reason is because you get to leverage your audience. Building the trust and then working them into buyers. I have other small blogs and I have affiliate links all over the place to utilize the audience that come and go from the site.
One other big aspect is selling banner space. It is one of the other money makers my personal blog makes. It is easy to sell space, but you need to prove you have the traffic and audience.
What would you recommend for a new blogger, that wants to create their own brand or presence in blogging?
Provide valuable immediate usable content. What I mean by this is give the user something to use right away from your blog. My blog, IanFernando.com only grew because of the tutorials I posted everyday on how I am making money online.
Most of my tutorials are video base, but the content was there. Imagine buying a $97 or even $197 ebook of video tutorials. I posted my own tutorials on my blog for free, and from there my blog automatically grew.
Giving out content that a user can take a way and start using gets you noticed and helps to develop and grow that trust factor right away.
Any recommended blogs or resources for bloggers looking to bring their blog to the next level?
There are a lot of tools to grow your blog. It depends on the goal that you want to reach. The blog to read on how to write and gain traction is my friend Brian at Copyblogger.com. His blog is really geared towards how to grow and write to your audience.
Another one is John Chow. I learned from his blog when I first started and I personally know his knowledge is important to any blogger who wants to start in the blogging space.
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Do you have any big announcements or upcoming projects you’d like to tell us about?
I work on projects all the time, I do have several tools that are coming up to help the online space gain traction. My current project is my InfiniteFB.com ecourse which helps users advertise properly on Facebook.
I am always moving and coming up with projects and tools to help the online space, so I suggest subscribing to my blog to keep up with what I do on a daily basis.
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DAN SCHAWBEL
OF PERSONALBRANDING.COM
Please tell us a little about yourself.
I started getting involved in the online world in middle school, but it wasn’t till 2007, after reading Tom Peter’s “Brand Called You” article, that I focused completely on personal branding. I learned how to market myself in College, when I had eight internships, seven leadership positions on campus, and my own consulting business. I wanted to become the Gen-Y personal branding voice online. Within six months, I launched Personal Branding Blog, Personal Branding Magazine, Personal Branding TV, and the Personal Brand Awards. Fast Company wrote about my activities, and a Vice President at EMC (my employer) recruited me to create the first social media position. That spawned the idea for my #1 international bestselling career book called Me 2.0 and as of January, I own my own business called Millennial Branding, LLC.
When did you start blogging and how did you first get into it?
My first blog was called “Driven to Succeed,” and I used the Blogspot platform, which is now called Google Blogger, backed in 2006. The purpose for the blog was to help college students navigate the working world, and secure internships and jobs. I felt that I had something to say, experiences to share, and an audience. I never marketed the blog, so there were almost no comments, which eventually made me stop blogging, until 2007 when I created Personal Branding Blog.
When starting your blog, did you ever expect it to grow to where it is today?
I don’t think anyone expects a blog or another product to just “take off.” For me, I would be blogging about personal branding whether I have fifty subscribers or fifty thousand. When the economy went under, my topic became timely, so my blog grew faster than a blog without that kind of luck. I was also well positioned, ranking #1 in Google for “personal branding.”
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It’s very hard for most average people to look at themselves as a brand or company. What advice do you have for someone with a passion, but little internet business knowledge and expanding that into a profitable business?
These days, you can’t be average if you want to be successful. There’s far too much competition, especially since there’s over 200 million blogs, 500 million people on Facebook, and 190 million twitter’ers.
You’re already a brand because people are judging you based on first impressions, whether you like it or not. You should own your brand, and position yourself based on what you want to be known for before someone else brands you. Also, you have to have an online presence if you want to be in the global talent pool and exist as a business. If you don’t have internet skills, then go out and get them, by either reading a blog, emailing an expert, paying a tutor, or by reviewing an online tutorial.
The best writers and bloggers are the best readers. Use Google Reader and subscribe to blogs and online news sites in your area of focus. I recommend finding blogs by using Technorati.com and Alltop.com. The more you read, the more you’ll figure out what you want to blog about. The more work you do upfront with your brand, the more time it will save you later. You don’t want to be everything to everyone, or you’ll be nothing to no one.
You have quite the following on Twitter with over 80,000 followers. How does one achieve such a following, while also managing all of those incoming comments and interactions?
For almost three years, I valued quantity just as much as quality, but now I don’t. Quantity open doors, but quality opens wallets. The way things work in the only world have dramatically changed in the past six months. I put more weight on traditional marketing than social media marketing now. The reason is simple: clutter. These days, people are following thousands of people on Twitter, so your messages get’s lost if you’re using it as a mass communication platform. For Facebook, there are two activity streams, and most of the time, your status updates fall in the live feed and get lost.
It’s all about the amount of effort someone takes in connecting with you. For instance, it takes only one click to follow someone. It takes two clicks and some effort finding the RSS button to subscribe to someone’s blog so that reader is more valuable. It
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takes just over a minute to fill out a name and email field of an email newsletter, and then a half minute to opt-in. I would rather have 5,000 email subscribers than 80,000 Twitter followers.
How have you incorporated affiliate marketing into your blog?
I actually don’t incorporate much affiliate marketing because it’s not my area of expertise and because I focus on monetizing in other avenues. I’ve done some affiliate marketing on my new blog StudentBranding.com, but I haven’t seen much return.
In your opinion, what is the single best way to monetize a blog?
The single biggest way to monetize a blog is by doing what you and most of the other experts do, an email newsletter, and product promotion. It’s really hard to get money through banner advertising unless you have ten thousand visitors per day and paid posts can make you lose subscribers. I’m still experimenting!
What would you recommend for a new blogger, that wants to create their own brand or presence in blogging?
Figure out what you’re passionate about and if you have the skills and knowledge to become an expert in your field. If you don’t, then build an education around your topic by reading as much as possible, coming up with your own theories, models, tag-lines, a banner, a mission statement, etc. Take a niche, so instead of being a personal finance expert, become a personal finance expert in Georgia for young adults. The more you go down the long tail, the better the chance you’ll have to stand out.
Any recommended blogs or resources for bloggers looking to bring their blog to the next level?
Aside from your blog, Problogger.net still offers great content, and I’ve always loved Mashable (I blog there too). You can pretty much google any questions that you have and find enough content to help you these days. I also like Daniel Scocco DailyBlogTips.com.
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Do you have any big announcements or upcoming projects you’d like to tell us about?
I’m launching a 3D personal branding world website for my business. If you go to http://personalbranding.com you will see it. It’s eight months in the making and is a portal to the four key areas I’m focusing on: education, consulting, community, and media. I also have the second edition of Me 2.0 that’s coming out on October 5th.
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JIM KUKRAL
OF JIMKUKRAL.COM
Please tell us a little about yourself.
My name is Jim Kukral and I’m an author, speaker, long-time blogger and Web entrepreneur. What I have passion for is helping other people and businesses find success online. I’m a graduate of The University of Akron, and have been working on the Web for over 15-years.
When did you start blogging and how did you first get into it?
I started blogging two months before 9/11. A younger employee of mine got me into it. I loved it because it allowed me to be a publisher. To spread my message to the world without gatekeepers. It changed everything for me.
When starting your blog, did you ever expect it to grow to where it is today?
Not really. At first I was writing about silly stuff. Random stuff about my life. That quickly turned into a blog about me and my business, then a blog about the Web marketing industry. It took a few years of random blogging before I realized that you could use a blog to help boost your brand and generate profits.
You’ve become quite the moderator and speaker at many well known events. How much of this promotion success do you attribute to your blog?
Quite frankly, my blog is probably the reason I’ve was able to break out and get well-known back in the day. Remember, social media wasn’t always here. It wasn’t as easy to get known so fast. Before that, you had to do it through writing great content or producing great videos, and hoping for backlinks and blog mentions and things like that. It’s not like today when Chris Brogan can tweet out your blog post and video and because he
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has hundreds of thousands of followers, he crashes your server for 3 hours because of the intense traffic. Which by the way happened to me last week.
How have you incorporated affiliate marketing into your blog?
Absolutely, from the very beginning. Now, I primarily concentrate on having a resources page of my favorites tools and things like that. I also use banner ads on my sidebar as other bloggers do. I also put affiliate links in my blog posts from time to time. Of course, I have a full disclosure policy on every page of my blog.
In your opinion, what is the single best way to monetize a blog?
Reviews. Find products/services that you love and talk about how much you love them.
What would you recommend for a new blogger, that wants to create their own brand or presence in blogging?
1. Your own domain name. 2. Get a simple logo done at 99designs.com or Fiverr.com. 3. Get Wordpress installed and buy a theme to make it look nice. 4. Start creating content every day. Not just blog posts, but videos, podcasts, white papers, eBooks, bootcamps, Webinars, etc... Don’t stop until you have millions of monthly visitors.
Any recommended blogs or resources for bloggers looking to bring their blog to the next level?
I think the ZacJohnson.com blog is pretty awesome. :)
Do you have any big announcements or upcoming projects you’d like to tell us about?
Well, my new book is for sale now as a preorder online. The book is called “Attention! This Book Will Make You Money”. You can find out more or get the link to order at http://www.attentionthebook.com. If you’re a small business person, or blogger, or entrepreneur, or even executive working at a large company, you’re going to want to read my book to learn how to drive sales, leads and publicity.
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MARKO SARIC
OF HOWTOMAKEMYBLOG.COM
Please tell us a little about yourself.
My name is Marko Saric, I started creating websites back in late 1990’s and then started converting my HTML sites into WordPress blogs in mid 2000’s. That is how I got into blogging and decided to create a blog on blogging.
When did you start blogging and how did you first get into it?
Somewhere in 2006 or so I converted one of my static HTML sites into a WordPress blog. I grew tired of having to work with HTML and having to manually upload files via FTP every time I had something to say so wanted to test this new thing I’ve heard about. Another thing I liked about blogs was the comments area so it was perfect to test.
When starting your blog, did you ever expect it to grow to where it is today?
I always have big ambitions about every project that I start so I always have huge expectations. Sometimes it doesn’t happen, sometimes it does, but it is good to see something grow big when you know how it all started with just a simple idea.
You offer consulting in many different areas such as blogging, branding and affiliate marketing. For someone just starting out, what is the best path to take to get started and making a few dollars online, while learning how to get to the next level?
Blogs are so easy to setup, no technical knowledge is needed so everyone should be able to buy a domain name and setup a blog. So if you have a good idea, just set it up and get started writing the best content that you can. Then get out there and start connecting to your audience. Do this daily for few months
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and you will see big changes happen and the monetization opportunities will start showing up.
How have you incorporated affiliate marketing into your blog?
I have created a lot of content around affiliate links. For example I use GoDaddy for hosting so I have created a how to install WordPress article which includes links to GoDaddy. Similarly, I use Thesis Theme for my design so I have created several articles with blog design tips which I then incorporate Thesis into.
In your opinion, what is the single best way to monetize a blog?
The easiest and most simple way to get started would be affiliate marketing. Find a product that you like to use and write educational articles around how it can help other people. Best way is creating your own product which I have seen after releasing my Twitter Marketing E-book. You kind of get away from the middleman and keep all the profits yourself.
What would you recommend for a new blogger, that wants to create their own brand or presence in blogging?
Get started - buy a domain name, install WordPress and start writing the best you can. Go into social media and start connecting to your target audience, find other blogs and comment on their posts. Submit a guest post or two to some of the biggest blogs in your niche as well. It takes a long time and a lot of hard work, but if you consistently spend a lot of time on this daily, you will see results happening within few months.
Any recommended blogs or resources for bloggers looking to bring their blog to the next level?
http://www.howtomakemyblog.com of course!
Do you have any big announcements or upcoming projects you’d like to tell us about?
I have recently taken on a big blogging / social media project in a public listed company, so that takes a lot of my time and it also gives me a lot of new experience and lessons learned, so I plan to write a lot of educational content around my experience there.
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SYED BALKHI
OF WPBEGINNER.COM
Please tell us a little about yourself.
I am a 19 year old web designer/developer, blogger, affiliate marketer, and social media addict. I am the founder of a web design firm, Uzzz Productions (www.uzzz.net), and a WordPress resource site known as WPBeginner (www.wpbeginner.com). Aside from these two projects, I run numerous PPC campaigns to promote affiliate products.
When did you start blogging and how did you first get into it?
I have been in the web design/development since 2002, but I really got into WordPress / Blogging in late 2005. My first blog was to help promote a web directory of mine, so it was more like a corporate blog. We released freebies, codes, tutorials, and other updates through that blog. Due to the blog, our audience doubled and tripled in a matter of months. After exiting the directory industry, I created Balkhis.com which is my personal blog. I also created another site which can be classified as a blog known as WPBeginner.
When starting your blog, did you ever expect it to grow to where it is today?
We launched WPBeginner on July 4, 2009 with an intent to help our clients at Uzzz Productions. Because most of our clients used WordPress, they had similar issues and problems. Instead of replying to each email / support ticket, we created WPBeginner as a FAQ type site. We would add articles as needed. Apparently, there was a huge need for a site like this which offers resource for free in the WordPress industry. In less than a year, this site has accomplished a lot. I will not go into bragging about the numbers, but if you want, you can see it yourself using numerous metric systems.
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Your background consists of both affiliate marketing, web designer and blogger. Of the three, which do you feel is the most viable source of income, or are you currently mastering the art of combining all three on your WPBeginner.com site?
I never like to place all of my eggs in one basket. We are utilizing all three methods on WPBeginner. We have advertisement on the blog, there is a services section which points to Uzzz Productions, and there are tons of affiliate links all throughout the blog.
How have you incorporated affiliate marketing into your blog?
YES, YES, YES. Affiliate marketing is a huge source of our income at WPBeginner. We have placed affiliate links where it is relevant. You will find a link or two (sometimes more) on every single post / page in WPBeginner. I am using a plugin called MaxBlogPress Ninja Affiliate which automatically find the keywords and hyperlink it with my affiliate links. I definitely recommend using it.
In your opinion, what is the single best way to monetize a blog?
For me, the best way to monetize a blog is through affiliate marketing. In the start, you will not have a lot of revenue from blog advertisement, or even services. Your main source of income would be through affiliate marketing. That is how I start on almost all of my blogs until the traffic builds up. Once you have the traffic, then you can start expanding your options and go into product launches etc.
What would you recommend for a new blogger that wants to create their own brand or presence in blogging?
Before I start anything, I always create a goal sheet for the project along with the exit strategy. I recommend all new bloggers to do this. If you can’t see yourself doing the same thing 6 months or 12 months later, then don’t do it. If you want to create a presence in blogging, then you need to create a presence in social media networks. Get started on twitter and facebook right away if you haven’t already. If you are starting a blog, then go with a Self Hosted WordPress. At WPBeginner, we will even do a free setup for you, if you follow our directions.
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I recently gave a presentation at a WordCamp about this subject, so I recommend you guys check it out: http://www.slideshare.net/wpbeginner/ive-got-a-blog-now-what-do-i-do
Any recommended blogs or resources for bloggers looking to bring their blog to the next level?
You have to stay active in the industry you are blogging in, so your daily reads might differ from mine if you are a mommy blogger, or a blogger in the dog industry. But in the general how to of blogging, Darren Rowse’s (Problogger.net) is a great resource. For affiliate marketing, I am certain you guys are already reading Zacjohnson.com. For social media news and tech news, I recommend staying updated with (Mashable.com and Techcrunch.com). For WordPress and technical aspect, I recommend staying updated with (WPBeginner.com)
Do you have any big announcements or upcoming projects you’d like to tell us about?
We are planning on launching a theme directory section, coupons section along side with a few other sections in WPBeginner real soon. There will be major User-interface (UI) changes to the design. You will see a new and better WPBeginner sooner than you think.
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MURRAY NEWLANDS
OF MURRAY NEWLANDS.COM
Please tell us a little about yourself.
I became a lawyer 15 years ago and soon realized that it was not for me. I started out in online marketing in 1999 setting up a design and marketing business. Later I moved into affiliate marketing and have worked with some of the leading agencies, advertisers and networks in the industry in that time. I am a keynote speaker at international marketing events. I run marketing events in the UK and USA. I founded the London Blog Club. I was a 2010 runner up in affiliate summits blogger of the year awards, I was happy to be bested by Shoemoney. I am best known for my blog Murraynewlands.com and my eventsinfluencepeople.com.
JohnChow said:
“I have watched, even scrutinized his progress. Murray is proof that you can start small (well actually he could still lose a pound or two) and go a long way in just a year. Just look at his Alexa stats. He has come from nowhere (aka the UK) – to one of the largest blogs about affiliate marketing. This is pretty remarkable for someone who has only just started blogging.”
When did you start blogging and how did you get into it?
Spring of 2009 year I was at Affiliate Summit in Las Vegas and engaged with two people who opened my eyes. Steve Hall told me about a blog called Adrants.com he gets over 15,000 visitors per day- that opened my eyes. Then I met Heather Smith AKA HeatherinBC.com, who told me people pay her to blog about stuff- another revelation! We got on like a house on fire and she has been my mentor ever since. Blogging has brought me income in the form of advertisers on my blog and the ability to promote my own products and events.
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Besides financially, how has blogging helped your business and brand?
Blogging has enabled me to connect with thousands of people as well as particular individuals who I want to have direct conversations with. I hope I never cease to be amazed at the connections that blogging can make. The blog brought me to the attention of Wiley and got me a book deal (I am still writing away). I have been flown across continents to speak at events which would never have happened without my blog. I get consultancy and business opportunities because of my blog and maybe more importantly because of the connections and conversations I am engaged in. Because of my blog I am able to make them a reality.
How have you incorporated affiliate marketing into your blog?
I blog about affiliate marketing and have blogs which are entirely monetized via affiliate marketing and others which monetize through Google adsense. I have also used Skimlinks and viglink.com but nothing compares to the income from your own events. My biggest tip is to blog about the subjects that you want to make money from and to grow the audience in those areas.
In your opinion, what is the single best way to monetize a blog?
Your readers come to your blog to read your opinion and content. They connect most strongly to the editorial content of the blog by producing products and services carrying the branding of the blog. You are able to maximize the potential revenues from it. In short create your own products. Lots of bloggers to this via online products or consultancy. Gary Vaynerchuk does it via his books and they create trust in winelibrary. My primary source of income now is from running events. This is both directly from my blog readers buying tickets to attend as well as through the relationships which are developed with affiliates who resell tickets for the events.
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What would you recommend for a new blogger, who was only looking to blog for financial gain?
Broadly speaking blogs take a little while to take off and get better with age. Focus on something that is a medium term to long term goal. This best suits blogging because it is not a case of immediate satisfaction. If you want to do something well then doing some homework at the start makes a difference. Get a mentor and read about blogging and how to be a better blogger.
Any recommended blogs or resources for bloggers looking to bring their blog to the next level?
There are lots of blogs and communities for bloggers: read them and get engaged. Do not just read about affiliate marketing or blogging. Stretch beyond these too.
Blogs: JohnChow.com, Chrisbrogan.com, Affiliatetip.com, missyward.com, Growmap.com, howtomakemyblog.com, revenueaddict.com, dmconfidential.com, ianfernando.com, adamriemer.me, oursociatimes.com, blog.clickbooth.com, blog.affilite.com, stateofsearch.com, adotas.com,
Communities: abestweb.com, thirdtribemarketing.com, problogger.com, seededbuzz.com, affiliatesummit.ning.com
I started the meetup group like the London Blog Club to network with other bloggers http://www.meetup.com/London-Blog-Club. Why can’t you start your own blogging group?
Do you have any big announcements or upcoming projects you’d like to tell us about?
Well there is my book coming out but that is next spring. My event series is my big new project www.influencepeople.com. Oh and I will be launching an ebook about blogging shortly. The rest I cannot talk about at the moment.
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GIDEON SHALWICK
OF GIDEONSHALWICK.COM
Instead of doing a text interview, Gideon Shalwick was generous enough to create an excellent 10 minute video of him answering each question and going into some great detail.
Click here to view the full interview video.
More about Gideon Shalwick.
Originally I started out with Engineering and Master in Engineering Management degrees, but soon realized that the business world was WAY more fun!
Then, in late 2006, after a successful career in project management and business development for various hi-tech companies, I decided to quit my job, emigrate to Australia, and start my own online business – not having a clue where to start!
In two short years, I became an international author with my books on entrepreneurship, lead generation and blogging distributed and read all over the world. My latest work, The Roadmap To Become A Blogger has been downloaded over 26,000 times now and another co-authored book has now been downloaded over 16,000 times.
Currently I focus on online video marketing and teach people how to build a ton of leads using simple tools like YouTube and blogs.
To find our more information about Gideon Shalwick and to learn how online video can help you get a ton of leads, simply visit www.GideonShalwick.com.
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YARO STARAK
OF ENTREPRENEURS-JOURNEY.COM
With Gideon Shalwick and Yaro Starak working closely together and both having their hands and time fully loaded, it’s no surprise that Yaro also went above and beyond expectations by also completing his interview in a non-traditional text format.
Click here to listen to my interview with Yaro Starak.
More about Yaro Starak.
Entrepreneurs-Journey.com content is produced by Yaro Starak, an entrepreneur from Australia. Yaro has created, managed and sold several different Internet businesses since 1998 and currently teaches people how to make a full time income from blogging part time through his Blog Mastermind coaching program.
Yaro operates from a home office or a laptop while traveling. He draws on his experience and passion for web business to teach others how to build and manage successful Internet enterprises.
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DAVID RISLEY
OF DAVIDRISLEY.COM
Please tell us a little about yourself.
My name is David Risley and I’m a professional blogger living in Tampa Bay, Florida. I’m married, with 2 young children.
When did you start blogging and how did you first get into it?
I started blogging before the word “blog” even existed. I started out in the late 90’s when I started the tech site which later became PCMech.com. The spark which got me into it was an article in Yahoo Internet Life (no longer in publication) about how to start a website in 20 minutes or less. So, I did it using the web hosting space which my dial-up ISP game to me. 5MB, woo-hoo! Well, one thing led to another and before long I was operating on a larger hosting account and actually running the site like a blog (even though blogs didn’t yet exist as a concept). It was a very manual process, but I was routinely publishing posts and doing mostly the same things we, as bloggers, do today.
When starting your blog, did you ever expect it to grow to where it is today?
Not at all. Honestly, I didn’t know what to expect. But, the idea of it growing to a point where I would later be living off of it and supporting my family from it - that thought never occurred to me.
Having been a successful blogger for over a decade, what are some of the good and bad trends that you’ve seen come and go over the years?
Well, I’ve seen a lot of services come and go, but the develop of blogging overall has only gotten better. The platforms we run on have gotten better. Back when I started (and even more recently), the idea of running a platform as robust as Wordpress is today was simply beyond reach. You know, before Wordpress, I actually
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went down the road of programming by own content manager and I spent a few years running my site on top of a CMS platform which I coded myself. So, fast forward to today, where we have Wordpress available for free and pretty much crushing the other mainstream CMS options - it is really something.
Aside from that, the blogosphere is just getting bigger. There are still plenty of people blogging similarly to the way we all did in the beginning. But, you’re now seeing many bloggers stand out from the crowd with some really stellar sites.
What steps have you taken personally to bring your blogging business from a $100k annual business to over $200k per year?
The biggest thing for me was to diversify a bit, then to pour on the marketing and product launching. For some time, PCMech.com was my only site. Yeah, I had developed it to over $100K per year in income, but that niche is extremely saturated (and still is). So, I decided to diversify into the blogging market, seeing as I certainly had the experience to talk about it. Furthermore, I thought that others in the niche weren’t quite pegging it correctly, likely because many of them didn’t run blogs outside of the blogging niche successfully. So, starting DavidRisley.com was certainly a big move for me. From there, I immediately went into product creation and did some product launches. That is what has grown the business for me.
How have you incorporated affiliate marketing into your blog?
I do some affiliate marketing, for sure. I tend to be a bit picky about what I promote. There are launches going on all the time and I don’t want to be one of those “me too” bloggers who promotes the same stuff all the time to the same people (sometimes using the same copy/paste copy). In short, however, I promote products I believe in to my crowd using my blog and my email list. I don’t really use banner ads much at all.
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In your opinion, what is the single best way to monetize a blog?
Creating your own product and marketing it effectively. If you’re really in tune with your audience and survey them regularly, you can create products which they have asked for. From there, it is just a matter of effective marketing. But, in my experience, launching my own products blows the pants off of any other monetization method. Second would be affiliate marketing. And a distant third, in my experience, is banners.
What would you recommend for a new blogger, that wants to create their own brand or presence in blogging?
Decide what you want to have, then what you need to do to have it, then ultimately who you need to be to make it happen. Then get busy doing it. It is easy to assume that it is going to be super difficult to break in to a scene full of big players, but it doesn’t have to be that way at all. Realize that success in this business of blogging is powered by human connection. So, instead of just writing your best stuff, publishing it and hoping people find it, you should spend quite a bit of time networking with others in the niche. Find the opinion leaders in your niche, get to know them and help THEM. It comes around again. If you think of this as a people business rather than a content business, you’ll probably find it simplifies quite a bit.
Any recommended blogs or resources for bloggers looking to bring their blog to the next level?
There are too many to mention, so in the interest of time and self-promotion (hehehe), I’ll just say - DavidRisley.com. ;-)
Do you have any big announcements or upcoming projects you’d like to tell us about?
Stay tuned for the relaunch of Blog Masters Club. I’ve got some big things planned. That’s at www.blogmastersclub.com.
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Carl Ocab
of CarlOcab.com
Please tell us a little about yourself
Hi, my name is Carl Ocab or as many call me, the “Kidblogger”. I’m a 16-year old kid from the beautiful archipelago Philippines.
Here’s a quick “overview” of my story…
(disclaimer: I’m not really good at telling stories so please bear with me here.)
I got my first computer at the age of four and got involved in the internet when I was 10 – playing online games, chatting with friends, networking, etc. I got so addicted that I had to use my own allowance to buy an internet prepaid card. Dial up was like the best I can get before because broadband or cable internet wasn’t on my dictionary yet.
3 years later, there was a time when me and my cousin were on for like five hours straight! (nothing special for internet “gurus” out there but hey, for a 13-year old, it was a big deal back then, specially if you’re paying per hour on allowance + per hour on the online game we were playing)
Suddenly, someone knocked at the door – GASP! It was my dad, he then jokingly asked “What will you get from those online games? You’ve been playing that for the whole day!”
That triggered my goofyness machine and looked for a hole to get through, so I replied “Well uh, I’ll beat my friends! And heck I’ll get on the leaderboard and get seen by a lot of people!”
Of course, that wasn’t a *real* good reason so he replied “That’s fine, all of us needs to enjoy life, but all day? Those games are eating your time AND money. It’s becoming an addiction. What will you get in the longrun?”
After that, he let us through but that conversation was running on my brain like a loop.
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After a week, I got so curious that I asked my dad “What’s a better thing to do, I know you stay on the computer longer than me.” Then he introduced me to blogging – blogging to make money.
Of course back then, I was like “How would I get the cash?” “Why would they give me cash?” “Blogging?!”
But we took baby steps, I kept on listening, then came AdSense, link building and some search engine optimization techniques.
So I did what *I* understood…
I spent the whole week making tons of blogspot blogs with content “copy pasted” from other sites I found via search and plastered huge AdSense ads on it. Made some pennies and later on got my blogs deleted by Google, it was labeled “spam”.
It was devastating. I mean, I spent the whole week making those blogs and POOF, just that, it was gone.
I was totally clueless and hopeless (I’m not a genius at all – heck I’m not even close to the honor roll!) so I stopped and got back to my old hobby – music. I love playing the piano but I’m not really like the “master” or something because I often switch from an instrument to another.
Here’s the sweet part, the “LIGHT BULB” moment…
Few months after that, while I was playing, an idea popped out of my brain: “What if I start a blog with all of the stuff I know about the online game I was playing?” I knew that I may fail again and just waste more time and money – but I took that all off.
So I ran back to my dad and asked for my very first own domain name and web hosting. Then I started to blog.
Now I knew what to do – I gave value AND I marketed that value.
I created original content, created sort of like a “fan club” really out of that online game and started to build a community. I was much easier than I thought (Plus, all I needed to start was just a domain and hosting) From there I was able to see results.
Those “results”, even though it was not that sweet, it kept me going. After just a few months, I started to see *real* bucks on my part.
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When starting your blog, did you ever expect it to grow to where it is today?
When I started carlocab.com, it was just a personal blog. The weird thing is - I did expect A LOT. I’ve read a lot of “hype” stories from the so called “gurus” making thousands in just days so that gave me the idea.
And as you know it, after a couple of weeks I didn’t make anything. Nobody read my blog, not even a single comment. But I disregarded my disbelief and just did it. I switched different niches, from tech, to health and heck even to gossip (LOL) and nothing worked out.
Your claim to fame is being a young teen blogger and achieving the number one ranking on Google for “make money online”. How much of an impact has this had for the branding of yourself and growth of your blog a few years later?
Oh man, it’s probably THE big break. When I changed my blog’s tagline 4 years ago from “Make Money Online With Carl Ocab” to “Make Money Online With A 13-Year Old” it was like I unleashed a tidal wave.
I would say it was luck before since I knew nothing about marketing.
But after awhile I realized that what I actually did was I separated myself to other make money online bloggers out there. Because let’s face it, if you just have “good” content, you won’t make it to the top, heck even very good content (btw, here’s a quite controversial post of mine about this)
To make it to the top, what you need is to market yourself, not just good content. And one very good way to market yourself (that I unknowingly did at that time) is to make a new category in your niche.
There’s a big chance that the niche you want to go to already have authority sites so what you want to do is to separate yourself from them – you can do that by categorizing yourself.
For example, a lot of people are already blogging about make money online so what I did was I categorized myself and made a new category about “kids making money online” hence the “Make Money Online With A 13-Year Old”
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How have you incorporated affiliate marketing into your blog?
Mainly through email marketing.
And I really suggest you try it since a lot of top affiliates make their most money through email marketing.
The idea is simple.
The normal affiliate marketing looks like this:
Traffic --> Affiliate link
But with email marketing, you add one step:
Trafifc --> Email capture page or squeeze page --> Affiliate link
Just by adding one step to the process, what you now have is probably the best source of unlimited income – their email address.
When you have their email address, you can send them offers OVER AND OVER AGAIN.
In your opinion, what is the single best way to monetize a blog?
Honestly though, there’s no single best way to monetize a blog.
Every blog could have different monetization strategies. Some blogs may make money with AdSense, some may not. Some blogs may make money with Affiliate Marketing some may not, etc etc.
So it all boils down to testing.
One of I consider a mentor, Matt Bacak always tell me that I shouldn’t rely too much on what people say that is “tried and tested”. The test and the results can be true but there are still chances that it may not work for you... so test test test and rely on your own results.
What would you recommend for a new blogger, that wants to create their own brand or presence in blogging?
It’s definitely to create your own category in your own niche.
Here’s an impromptu example about top notch car brands
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making their own category:
The niche is cars.
Volvo – category: safety driving
Mercedes – category: luxury
BMW – category: awesome driving experience
So let’s say you want to go to the dating niche, you can try categories like “Dating for retired people”, “Dating for divorced people”, etc.
Any recommended blogs or resources for bloggers looking to bring their blog to the next level?
Actually I don’t have anything in particular but I would love to promote my own.
Notice I did say “promote”. I mean why not? We’re all marketers here and it would suck not to be upfront ;-)
But instead of me selling you to my own product, I’ll simply tell you what it does...
Basically, one of the biggest sticking points of new bloggers out there is the technical aspect.
Say moving sidebars, changing colors, adding ads, etc. It requires coding, and let’s face it, coding sucks! It’s hard, heck I’m afraid to touch code.
Now that’s where my product, the Ultimate Blogging Theme, takes play.
Basically the Ultimate Blogging Theme is a WordPress theme that lets you customize your blog – change fonts, colors, add logo, switch left or right sidebar, insert email capture/optin forms, add meta keywords, meta description, title tags, change blog layout color, and more...
Without touching any code.
And it’s so flexible that some people tell me that they don’t even notice sites that are actually using the Ultimate Blogging Theme.
I’m pretty sure you’ll like it, it’s at
http://www.ultimatebloggingtheme.com/
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Do you have any big announcements or upcoming projects you’d like to tell us about?
Actually right now I’m pretty much scheduled since it’s my 1st year of college and it’s been crazy. I was pretty lucky though to have a team of programmers who’s working for me fulltime to manage almost everything I do online. It’s one of the biggest blessings.
But if you would like to contact me, feel free to email me anytime. All shenanigans are here in my blog http://www.carlocab.com/
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Michael Dunlop
of RetireAt21.com
Please tell us a little about yourself.
My name is Michael Dunlop, I’m 21 years old, living on my own in Southampton, England. I’m like any 21 year old really, I enjoy KFC, I like burning the candle at both ends and I love all the naughty things in life.
When did you start blogging and how did you first get into it?
Depends what you call blogging really, I had a Wordpress blog perhaps 3 years ago but I never published on it and really did much. About 15 months ago I decided to really give it a go, I had just got back from an event in Washington DC and had this idea to help people do what I was doing with my website (create and make money from a website). I launched it 4 days after I got home and that very first month I made $5000 - I was able to do this because I provided real value to my readers.
Blogging is really something a lot of us have been doing for years before it even existed..it basically is having a website you update regularly with content. The best thing about it is the low start up costs, you can get online for only $10 if you wanted.
When starting your blog, did you ever expect it to grow to where it is today?
I actually believe I would be a millionaire from it by now if I’m honest with you and I think the reason I’m not is because I don’t work hard enough. Your lucky to get one post a week but if I was to post twice a day, I would be on a whole other level and making a lot of money.
I always dream big and I think you have to if you want to become successful, what’s the point spending all that time creating a site just to expect a $1 a day through Google Adsense, you got to aim to be next big thing if you ask me. To grow your site quick, you
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need traffic and to get a lot of traffic you need to publish viral content like 50 Richest Young Entrepreneurs, which was one of my first posts - this has brought me perhaps 500,000 visitors to date. Doing top lists rocks and you will get a lot of traffic if you do it right.
You have many successful blogs, focusing on both how to make money online and specifically on showing your visitors how to create their own blog. What have you found to be the most important areas to focus on, leading up to the creation, process and completion of a success site or blog?
A key strategy for your blog is a must... I personally believe that every site can only have one brand and reason someone uses it. For example, Sitepoint is for all webmaster news and learning, that’s their brand, they had a marketplace where people could buy/sell websites however it wasn’t overly populer because it wasn’t the sites main focus. Once they moved this to a new domain and built a brand around it, (flippa.com) they were really able to grow the business and make it a power house for selling and buying websites and at the same time, making them a lot of money!
How have you incorporated affiliate marketing into your blog?
To monetize my site, I only use affiliate marketing, I don’t find selling reviews and advertising to be profitable at all and I have had millions of visitors to test this. Basically, I use products for my online business, I show people me using them and so they know they work and can see they need them to. They buy, I make money - it’s really that simple.
In your opinion, what is the single best way to monetize a blog?
Provide value, this may seem simple but 99% of people don’t do it. If you provide value by what you are promoting, then you will make money. I was told that the key to making money is this: Find a problem, create a solution and then monetize it. As long as you follow that, you will make money.
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I make the most money from my autoresponder series because I provide tutorials of me doing something which my readers can follow and can see what products I’m using and so they know I’m not just promoting it to them to make money but in fact they actually need it.
What would you recommend for a new blogger, that wants to create their own brand or presence in blogging?
I said this a few times already but it’s that simple: PROVIDE HUGE VALUE! As long as you do that, you will get a lot of traffic and you will make a lot of money. That’s all I have done to grow my 6 figure income from blogging. Successful websites wouldn’t be successful if they didn’t prove to be useful to people and this is where so many people slip up, they think a throwing up any old post will be good enough to get traffic and make money, well it isn’t. You need to be consistently great and if you can do that, people will remember and will keep coming back.
Any recommended blogs or resources for bloggers looking to bring their blog to the next level?
I subscribe to perhaps two email lists and that’s just to keep up to date with all the product launches and I subscribe to no blogs as I hardly read. However, having said that, there are a few sites I like and wish they posted more often as they are run by very clever people, they are: Yoast.com QuickSprout.com and MarketingWithYou.com
Do you have any big announcements or upcoming projects you’d like to tell us about?
Sure, goals for the rest of the years is to bring out a series of products about how I run every part of my business, make money, drive traffic and create great sites. If I can leave you with one suggestions: JUST DO IT! If you don’t, your regret it.
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9BONUSResource Directory
BONUS: Resource Directory
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