Posts Tagged ‘Blogging’

Have you become too money obsessed with your blog?

Jan 12, 2009 Blogging

There are definitely blogs that I have been a loyal subscriber in the past that I now turn away from with distaste. And there are other blogs that I had come across because of one excellent blog entry I discovered – usually one in the archives that I landed on either through a link from another blog or after doing a search — that was worthy of subscribing to the entire blog, but I ended up unsubscribing almost immediately because all of the recent entries on the blog had become far too obsessed with trying to make as much money off of me as possible, that it made me wonder what value I was getting out of it, since the blogger seemed determined to suck all the value out of me

We all can probably think of one blog we used to be a fan of , but it hit that point where the making money off readers obsession hit full force with such a vengeance, that it seemed none of the blog entries were being written without having some ulterior motive to make money. And sometimes it isn’t as obvious to the writer that his or her blog has crossed the line where those ulterior motive blog posts become noticeable, not to mention irritating, to loyal subscribers. So if you think you may have crossed the line, or wonder where that line really is, here are some things to consider, because the last thing you want to do is alienate your loyal subscribers and send them subscribing elsewhere! In other words, here’s how to make sure your ads aren’t driving everyone else nuts :)

Acceptance

Mostly gone are the days when blog readers used to get all up in arms because someone dared to put an ad on their blog (yes, that really did happen). Fortunately now, most people realize that people need to get some payment for the labor of love that is their favorite blog to read. If you have a backlash, add one of the “donation” links and request that some readers pitch in to help cover hosting and support for the blog. Some will be willing to ante up a few bucks for their favorite blog, but secondly, the others will realize there are costs associated with the blog, and advertisements can cover those costs so you can continue to blog

Sponsored blog posts

How often are you doing some kind of blog post that has been sponsored by companies or products? Sure, a blog can definitely support doing sponsored blog posts, particularly once you get RSS subscribers levels up, but you need to consider two important things. First, is that sponsored blog post you are planning to do actually relevant to the blog? Sure a company might want to pay you $200 for writing about a specific kind of hot tub, but if your blog is primarily about healthy meals for families, that blog post will stick out like a sore thumb.

Second, how often are you doing sponsored blog posts? Doing one sponsored blog post in every ten or so entries will allow readers to be a lot more forgiving than if those same readers realize that the last seven blog posts you did have all been sponsored. And just remember, the fewer true subscribers you have, the less money you will earn if and when you do decide to do a sponsored blog post.

So if you do decide to go the route of sponsored blog posts, ensure that the sponsors posts are actually related to what you are blogging about, and that you don’t go overboard by doing them too frequently.

Affiliate links

Just because you have a Commission Junction account doesn’t mean that you should link up every possible word in every one of your blog entries with something you can get money from, nor should you go out of your way to write about something just because you can slap an affiliate link in it. More often than not, they are off-topic to your blog, and you probably won’t make much money – if any – to make it worthwhile. That said, there is absolutely nothing wrong with blogging about something and linking to it with an affiliate link, just keep in mind that everything in moderation is good. So avoid the new blogger temptation of linking up every possible thing in each blog entry, because that will turn readers off pretty darn quick.

There is nothing wrong with affiliate links, but just like sponsored blog posts, you don’t want to go overboard with them either.

On topic

Just as you want sponsored blog posts to be on-topic to your blog, the same should apply for any advertisements or links on your blog. If you have a ton of links in your blog roll on all the “high profit” areas that have absolutely no relevance to your blog (whether it is your texas holdem site or not), it will turn people off – not to mention the potential search engine repercussions as well. Keep all your ads as on-topic as possible, even if it means turning down $25 from that poker site, even though they will probably tell you how your blog about expectant mothers of twins is perfect for it!

Overboard - Ads Ahoy!

Just as you want to make sure your ads are all on-topic, you want to make sure you don’t go overboard by adding too many advertisements either. Start off small, such as an ad unit in the footer, or a 125×125 ad in the sidebar, and then gradually add one more placement a few weeks at a time until you are where you want to be. Your readers will be much more accepting with a gradual advertisement increase than they would be if you suddenly added all 8 ad placements overnight. And the same applies to brand new blogs versus proven successful blogs too, readers are much more tolerant of those well known successful blogs too!

Hit the Monkey

You know how annoying those hit the monkey flashing animated gifs are on any website, and of course all the variations of them… so why would you want to torture your own blog visitors with them? Flashier isn’t better, and many a surfer has left a site in haste after spotting one of those uber-flashing banner ads. It is far better to have a non-animated and non-annoying ad on your site than a flashier one, even if it pays less money, because the loss of visitors could be more costly than having the extra $25 or $50 in your PayPal account.

Just because you have multiple ads, doesn’t mean you have to use them all at once!

Don’t forget that you can definitely use more than one network or stream of revenue on your blog… but you don’t have to use all of them at once! Perhaps one offer from one network would work well as it is targeted perfectly to your readers this month, but the following month a rival network has a better offer for something else that is also perfectly targeted. You might find Adsense works very well for you on the whole, and you supplement it with one 125×125 image ad in the sidebar from Pepperjam. Some bloggers might even drill it down to the blog entry level and pick and chose specific ads for each entry, to tailor the ads perfectly to each topic within the blog’s theme. Or you might decide to use just a single ad placement but use a third party service such as ScribeFire Quick Ads to automatically optimize it for you. There are many ways to add multiple streams of revenue without turning your readers off.

ROI

And if you are placing affiliate ads on your site, especially a bunch of different ones, make sure you get on board with a decent analytics program and track your ROI. True, you aren’t spending money to put that ad there, but what good is it having an ad taking up space on your blog when it has resulted in zero commission sales for you in the past three months? As many new affiliate marketers with a brand new affiliate company account, if you are tempted to place a bunch of different ads on your blog to see what sinks and what swims, you are better off to just use one or two ad placements and use an ad management program to rotate them. It will be far easier to see what is working well for you and what isn’t, and then remove the ones that aren’t working so you can give the ones that are resulting in sales more pageviews.

Life Beyond AdSense

Believe it or not, there is money to be made beyond AdSense ;) Many bloggers are tempted to slap AdSense on their blog and forget about doing anything else to increase the revenue, especially if they are content with what they are currently earning with AdSense. If you have fallen into the comfort of AdSense (and trust me, many people have), take a look at Supplementing AdSense with Affiliate Ads.

Don’t use just one ad revenue source

If you are planning to purchase a brand new car, you wouldn’t just go into the first dealership you find and buy your new car there on the spot without checking out any other dealerships. The same thing goes for advertising too. Avoid the mistake of just using Google AdSense or just using Commission Junction, unless it has proven itself to be the most successful for you. While both Google AdSense and Commission Junction attract many new bloggers simply because of name recognition, don’t forget there are many other networks out there. I have done a few reviews on JenSense of different ad networks that supplement AdSense well, read the reviews on the Pepperjam Network and on ClickBooth.

Rule of thumb

When all else fails and you are wondering if maybe you have gone overboard with the advertising on your blog… you probably have! It is better to err on the side of caution than turn off potential or current subscribers because you thought all eight of those ads above the fold were golden.

Whenever people start to think about how they can offset some of the costs associated with blogging they can quickly jump that line and start alienating readers, usually brought on by the first big affiliate sale or the first person that wants to pay three figures for a link or sponsored blog post. So when the euphoria comes of “I can make a ton of money doing this!” make sure you are doing it slowly and carefully because the last thing you want to do is lose some of those longtime subscribers or prevent new ones from subscribing in your overzealousness.

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Blogger’s to do checklist before hitting the publish button

Apr 30, 2008 Blogging

How many times have we hit publish on a blog and then realized we forgot to do something crucial, whether it is changing post slugs or a crucial spell check. Here is a quick checklist of what you should do before you hit publish.

Did you type what you meant?
Avoid the temptation to write and then immediately hit publish. Always go back and reread your blog entry to make sure what you had in your head actually ended out coming of your fingers on the keyboard. You can also catch grammatical errors and little accidental typos that still make an actual word or where you wrote the same word twice in a row.

Do you have a hook?
The first paragraph of your blog entry is crucial. If you have a poorly written opening paragraph, readers have to be pretty motivated to read beyond that. So think of the opening paragraph as the most important part of your entire article. Make sure it is well written and enticing enough – usually with a hook - to encourage people to continue reading through to the end. Copyblogger has a great post on opening with a bang.

Spellcheck
There shouldn’t be an excuse for not spell checking, and you should always do it… although even I often forget. Someone needs to create a plugin that has an auto-spell check function when you hit publish.

Double check your links work
Make sure you haven’t accidentily forgotten a http:// or forgotten a critical period. You should double check each and every link to make sure it works, and make sure you didn’t put something else from your clipboard in place of the URL you intended. I once saw a blog where the URL linked to was actually a snippet from an IM that the author intended to paste to someone and not the URL they planned to use.

Related articles you can link to?
Are there any previous blog entries that you can link to as relevant to the topic? If so, definitely lead your visitors in that direction, especially if the blog entry is an “oldie but goodie” and not one that you published just two days ago. There is a plugin available to automatically display related blog posts.

Other blogs you can link to
Share the link love. Are there blog entries that others have written that are related to the topic. Even if they are friends, as long as the content is relevant, include some links to others. Read Why you should actively link out from your blog.

Did you source your sources?
Reporting on a news story or commenting on someone else’s commentary? Be sure you include a link to your source, whether it is linking to Joe’s New SEO blog or the likes of CNN or Forbes.

Check your post slug
Wordpress 2.5 makes this a bit easier, by highlighting the post slug underneath your title, but I still sometimes forget to do this (although I usually remember between the time I schedule a post and the time it actually gets published. Shorten the length and make sure you are including the important keywords from the title.

Check your alt tags
Are you including alt tags on your images? Be sure to tag all your images when you blog with the relevant keywords specific to the photo. And yes, avoid the temptation to keyword stuff those as well ;) Use the SEO Friendly Images plugin to optimize your images as well as do alt tags.

Did you include categories?
Now that categories seem fairly hidden below the blog entry field instead of next to it in the new Wordpress, I keep forgetting to tag blog posts with categories. But looking at analytics, I can see just how many people come to the blog on a social media or pay per click post and then go to the category level to see the other articles I have written on the same topic. So be sure you are including categories and that they are relevant to the topic.

Did you tag it?
Along with categories, be sure to tag relevant topics and keywords on your blog entries to… if you are new to tagging, also make the time to go back on previous blog entries and tag them.

Check the vibe and flow
Sometimes you just don’t have the flow going, no matter how hard you rewrite the blog entry. And a missing vibe or flow of the piece can make a blog post mediocre when it could have been great. In this case, hit save instead of publish, and go back to it another day. When you look at it again after a few days, you can rewrite it to capture that previously ellusive vibe.

While I try my best, I don’t always remember to do everything on the list when I hit publish, but I do my best ;) Anything else I missed that you do before you hit publish on your blog?

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Is blogging running your life instead of you running your blog?

Apr 29, 2008 Blogging

Yes, it’s true, there are people who love to blog - and blog with such a passion we wonder how we could emulate what they do. But there is a fine line that you might be crossing over… one where it seems you are no longer the boss of your blog, but that your blog is the boss of you. While not everyone is in danger of this happening, it seems to be something that is happening to people with a bit more frequency lately. So if you are a super blogger, you need to sit back and consider if you are really running your blog or if your blog is running you.

Addiction
Some of us are lucky to get out a blog entry a week, while others desperately try for one blog entry a day. But if you are sitting and your desk blogging and turning down chances to be social (and no, I don’t mean just taking the time to update your Twitter status or video conferencing, I mean actual face-to-face interactions with other people) you need to sit back and think if you really need to be on the super blogger schedule that you are on. Can you cut back your seven blog posts a day to four posts then slowly get it down to one or two?

Addiction Pt. 2
Some bloggers have the need to post as much as they can, but in some cases, being so blog happy can actually turn off your readers. Why? Because when they view your feed there is just so much there they just don’t know where to begin if at least one of those blog posts don’t immediately pop at them. You could lose subscribers that would have happily stuck around to read one great blog post a day but found seven just two overwhelming day in and day out.

Honey, it’s bedtime
If your partner is making bedroom eyes at you, but you decline the suggested offer so you can blog instead, well, many people will wonder what on earth you are doing still at your computer!! Yes, there will always be times where you need to make the decision of blogging over your partner, but these cases should be extreme and few and far between. If your blog just got hacked from a WordPress exploit, most people can understand the need to fix it ASAP before any more damage is done. If you found something Digg or Slashdot-worthy because it is breaking news, by all means write your blog entry now, because those 8 hours of, er, slumber could mean that someone else breaks the story. But is it your latest top ten list of how to stop comment spam, well, that is something that can and should wait until morning.

You blog on days you really shouldn’t be
Is it an hour before you exchange wedding vows and you are sitting at your computer blogging about what you think Google should do with YouTube, you really have to sit and ask yourself WHY. There are some days where blogging should be a no-no, so think of life’s big events (weddings, baby’s birth, significant funerals) and either schedule those blog posts or get up a little extra early to do it before anyone else in the house awakens, or perhaps a quick “He’s here, 8lbs 2 oz, Christopher Michael, pics soon!” posted to your blog from your Blackberry. Even your wedding anniversary qualifies if your husband or wife is sitting in the living room waiting for you to come down so you can leave for your romantic evening out. If you are putting these types of events second to blogging, yes, Houston, you have a problem.

Making life’s small events blogworthy
Sure, we all have things happen to us and think “Wow, that will make a great blog analogy”, such as the friend who replied to me “So, you do Facebook” when I mentioned I do social media consulting. That isn’t really a stretch, and it highlighted the fact people in the industry still think of social media as sites like Facebook and MySpace. But are you taking all those little things and constantly wondering how you can make them blog worthy? If you are an SEO blogger, you will probably find it hard to figure out how to spin the fact your daughter is potty trained into a blog post… but if your blog is running you, chances are you will figure out how to do it anyway just so you have something - anything - to write about, even if the end result sucks.

Does your output match your expected quality
When I have followed those who blog multiple times a day, I notice that the quality goes down. Why? Because they are so focused on how much they can output, with the desire to blog anything just to blog, they fail to notice the quality drops significantly compared to when that same person writes one well thought out blog post. I have unsubscribed from people’s blogs for this exact reason because I tired of not only how they turned potty training into an SEO related post, but did it so poorly that it was almost embarrassing to read. One well written and thought out blog post will trump 20 lesser blog posts any day of the week. Your blog doesn’t “need” you to post the seven times a day you want to blog, so cut back on quantity and up the quality instead. And if you think your blog really needs you, you probably have bigger issues than just a blog addiction!

Blogging something you hate
I would much rather read about a subject from a blogger who loves it, rather than from a blogger who hates the topic but does it anyway. If this is how you feel about your blog, where it is a chore to blog even just once a week, you might be better off kicking it to the curb and selling it, then using the money to start up something new that you are passionate about. Just because you end up hating the topic doesn’t mean you are a failure. But you might want to pick the next topic with much more care next time. It is no surprise that finding your blogging niche equals blog success. Just make sure you aren’t having a bad week and sell on impulse, which so often people end up regretting. If you are hating it, sit on it for a month, while continuing to blog so you maintain the blog’s sell value, and if you still despise every moment you have to spend on it, then sell it.

We all have times where we swear our blogs and/or websites are running our lives… and sometimes they do and they (unfortunately) need to. But it is still important to make sure that you aren’t always being run by your blog… if you are missing out on what non-bloggers would consider must-not-miss events, well, you should probably rethink your priorities a bit so that you can have a balanced life and not one where you blog is making your personal decisions… because last I checked, your blog really isn’t good company when you are out of reach of your computer ;)

Now, hands everyone… is your blog running your life? And what do you do about it?

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