The Blog FAQ

By Jonathan Hook

 I’ll bet that like most people, you’ve got a blog. I’ll raise that bet a little and speculate that if you’ve been blogging for any length of time, you have quite a few readers who are earning you - well, nothing. Have I won the bet? If you want to win too, you need to find a way to earn money from your blog. A really quick and simple solution is to turn it into a digital book.

Many novice bloggers have this notion that all you have to do is set up a blog and wait for the subscribers and money to roll in. A bit of experience teaches people that it takes a bit of time and consistent posting to build up a list that trusts you. After some time passes, most hit the point where they have a great list, but aren’t seeing an income of any kind being generated as a result of all their posting.

If you’re at this point, don’t get too discouraged, there may be a payout for you yet.

While there are a few things you can do, turning your blog into an ebook may be the quickest way to see a return.

You have all the makings for successfully selling a digital product - trusting potentials and a niche subject that is already written in your posts. If the topic is one that you are passionate about and know well, your blog entries are probably interesting. You know they have value because you have loyal readers. People don’t usually hang out at a blog that doesn’t offer them anything.

By going digital, you are providing a service to your loyal supporters and drop-ins alike. Think of it as the home game version of your blog. Buyers have your info in a convenient, tidy package and they get to keep it.

Here are a few pointers to keep in mind:

- Use a nice, neat format. Keep it easy to read.

- Organize the information in a logical way, grouping subjects.

- Have a table of contents near the beginning to help readers find what they’re looking for.

- Make it easy to download and email. Clients won’t appreciate technical complications, or files that are too big.

- Use a proofreader (can’t be stress enough!). Doesn’t have to be a paid professional. Someone you know who has good grammar and spelling skills will do.

- Make it interesting to look at as well as read. Attract people to the content with visual interest.

- Use titles, subtitles, and sidebars where it makes sense to. People like to be able to read quick synopsis, and find what information they’re looking for fast. Make it easy for them to do so.

- Add graphics or photos if it makes sense. No copyright infringement! You can equate this to putting pictures on the walls of your home. They add that extra touch.

- If you have the funds to invest in dressing up your ebook, you can have a nice cover and box designed especially for your product. There are several online companies that offer that service.

You don’t have to have a lot of money to convert your blog to a digital product. If you have Word, you can save your finished document as a pdf file, and you’ll be ready to go. After that, you only need to choose your selling method.

So, now I’ll bet that you’re going to earn money from your blog and go digital. Do I win? Try it at least once and see for yourself.

Jonathan Hook offers free tips on how to make money with your blog at www.e-bloggers.com. Click now and start earning money with your blog

Web Marketing - 4 Must Do Techniques to Drive Traffic
By Jackie Lee

 As a blog owner you must know how to drive traffic. Traffic is an essential part of any website. Without traffic there is no opportunity to make money.

Most people struggle to increase their traffic, many get frustrated and quit. Don’t fall into that trap. Driving traffic is easy if you know how to do it. Follow these 4 techniques consistently and you will increase your traffic.

Reciprocal Blog Links

Ask bloggers who write in related niches to swap links with you. This is called reciprocal linking or also blogroll link swapping.

Reciprocal linking helps in a couple of ways. You can ask the blogger to use specific keyword texts in your link on their site. This will give you a powerful link on each and every page, post and tag page of their blog. The more links you have the better your site will do for the keyword in Google.

If the blogger is getting decent traffic you may also see traffic come directly from the blogroll link.

Bookmark Your Posts

Each time you bookmark your posts you give yourself another backlink. These are not the best backlinks as they are not keyword anchor text liniks, but all links count at least a little.

You also give others the opportunity to find your site when they search on a bookmarking site.

Bookmarking all the different sites can be time consuming, but there is software available to make it a little easier. You can try social poster, or only wire if you want to submit your site to many bookmarking sites at once.

Article Marketing

This is one of the best ways to build backlinks and drive traffic to your site. The more backlinks the better you do in search engines.

After you have written your post think of a few other related topics and write a quick article on those topics. You can then use your resource box to include 2 links to your site. These can and should be keyword anchor text links.

Then submit the articles to as many article directories as you can. There is software available to make this process easier, and there are services that will do the entire submission process for you.

Blog Directories

My Blog Log and Blog Catalog are two of the most popular blog catalogs. This is where you can submit your blog and interact with other bloggers.

They are also like a huge search engine for blogs. You can just submit a search and it will bring back all the different blogs in the directory that talk about that topic.

There are so many ways to drive traffic to your site. No matter how you decide to do it, you must do it. Your site will never make money if no one ever sees it.

Remember, small consistent action usually does more good than one grand action. Just choose a couple things to do and do a little bit daily and you will see your traffic increase.

Stop by to learn more traffic building web marketing strategies and how to put together a successful web marketing plan.

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