Archive for March 21st, 2010

How can you increase the value of your blog to get the maximum income through sponsored posting? What do you need to do to get lots of high value offers, rather than just a handful of cheap bids?

If you want to become involved in sponsored posts as a way to monetise your blog, when are the successful keys? You will have to ‘sell’ your blog to advertisers, without being able to make direct contact with them. They will review a few statistics about your site and maybe visit it. So it is vital that your blog is well prepared and ready for these advertisers.

Although some schemes have slightly different criteria to other schemes, these keys factors will place you well with almost any sponsored post system If you can follow these, you should be able to make a reasonable income, but beware that it should not be looked at as a get rich system. Yes, some advertisers are paying hundreds of dollars to bloggers, but these are few and far between and your blog has to be spot on.

So what might an advertiser be looking at when deciding whether to make you an offer for a sponsored post on your blog?

1 ) A decent Google Page Rank and plenty of incoming links.
Try some article writing and see if you can have some of your best work included as guest posts on other peoples’ blogs. By building up incoming links you Page Rank will improve and directly increase the value of your blog.

2 ) Build a following.
Advertisers measure traffic to a blog through the Alexa ranking and being able to demonstrate a good RSS and newsletter circulation list will show that their expensive add will be reaching an audience.

3 ) Use your own domain name.
Don’t use a blogger name or other provider’s name – register your own URL and a lot more advertisers will be interested in your.

4 ) Write often.
If you only post sponsored posts, then a lot of the better advertisers, those that bother to look at your blog because they are paying well, will know that their advert will at best be hidden amongst many others and at worst just posted on an blog only intended to earn money.

5 ) Be selective.
You can’t write often enough if you are accepting loads of paid opportunities. If you accept 4 paid opportunities per day, some systems would demand that you then write another 8 posts! Two own for every paid is a lot of writing if you are accepting a lot of paid opportunities.

Also, if you are just accepting every offer then a lot of them will be irrelevant to the subject of your blog. Casinos on a site about blogging might just stand out as a sponsored post. Not a problem if it is only once in a while, but if you post several together and often, you will also lose readers.

6 ) Write well.
When you do complete a paid post, make sure that it is well written and looks good. The advertiser is paying for it and they want it to look good, so do a good job for them and if the system has a rating system they might give you a good mark.

7 ) Be realistic.
Don’t expect hundreds of high paying opportunities. If your blog doesn’t have lots of followers expect less. As you build up a reputation, you can start to charge more.

To learn more about setting up a blog for a profit, sign up to our newsletter and we will send you a free copy of our new Ebook – how to start my blog – which helps you in all stages from setting it up, securing it, getting new readers and turning it into a profit. It is an absolute must for new bloggers.

Written by Keith Lunt, experienced blogger.

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By directing visitors around your blog you can increase visitor retention. But how do you steer them and where do you steer them? Read on!

Steering visitors around your blog is an essential trick that will help to increase the success of your blog. Look at is as guiding your visitors to where you want them to go to increase your targets.

The Aim Of Flowing Your Visitors
To increase the value and success of your blog you need readers every day and lots of them! This is basically acheived through making sure visitors that arrive to read a post go on to read a second post and so on.

Once your visitor has read a few posts they become interested in you and what you have to say. They will hopefully then take an interest in the products that you want to promote and maybe even start to follow your new posts and come back.

Therefore, the aim is rather than a visitor finding your blog and reading a single post before leaving, you want them to read a handful of pages and then commit to returning. A single visitor creating one page view becomes a loyal reader creating loads of page views.

Create The Flow
So how do you do this? Well, not for a start by listing most recent posts as your main navigation! This information is neither use nor ornament and I recommend that you replace your recent posts links with a most popular posts link instead. New visitors are not bothered about your most recent work, but if you can showcase your best writing then they might take an interest and start reading these.

If they get to the bottom of your post then give them something else to read. Try one of the many excellent related posts plugins available. If they have enjoyed reading your article about widgets and you have more similar articles on offer, then make sure they can find them. Do not leave them hunting for the information that they do not know exists.

Where To Flow Your Visitors To
After they have read a few posts and established for themselves that you are worthwhile reading, give them a way of finding you easily again. RSS links are scattered about the page, but make sure that they are mentioned in key areas – such as clearly at the bottom of the article. Present your RSS feed in the same style as the body of the article and they might just read it automatically. Separate it by a horizontal line and in different text and they probably will totally ignore it.

Many people know how to use RSS, but what about those that do not? For these people there is no harm running an email newsletter. With these you also get the opportunity to include further information that they might not see, such as latest offers. Offer Facebook and Twiter as well as alternative ways of following your latest information.

All of these methods need to be presented to your readers at the right time – just when they want to use them. Make sure that they are clear on the page when they have read the post, when they are most open to following you.

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