As good as Blogger is for creating blogs quickly, if you're serious about business blogging, you'll need to install blogging software on your own site. With your own site, you can change the look and feel. You can add your own ads, or create your own members-only section.
You can pay a lot of money, but you don't have to. I've found that BLUEHOST offers everything I need for only a few dollars a month. (The current cost is $6.95) With the standard hosting account you get unlimited storage, Gigs of site transfer, an autoresponder, email accounts and an email autoforwarder, and most of the most common plugins. You get blog software, social networking support, poll & survey software, and multimedia support. Also included are e-commerce support, including the most common shopping cart solutions.
If you need a new domain name, it's free..
In short BlueHost is a good choice for site hosting. Click here to sign up at Bluehost.com
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Link Building
Kathleen Gresham publishes Blog Design Journal, an internet-based collection of useful information to make your blog better. The July 3 issue is about link-building.
According to Gresham, there are 2 kinds of links: reciprocal links and one way links. You get a reciprocal link when two sites agree to put one another's link on their site. One-way links are when one site references another, like I did in the first paragraph of this post.
According to Gresham, "links from a relevant site it will rate higher than from a non relevant site. The number, or volume, of links is important as well. The more the better."
Links to your site are valuable because they tell the search engines your content is worth looking at, relevant to a topic, etc. Higher relevance means higher rank. Higher rank means it's easier to find. The easier to find, the more visitors. The more visitors, the more potential income.
And for the business blogger, that's the point.
According to Gresham, there are 2 kinds of links: reciprocal links and one way links. You get a reciprocal link when two sites agree to put one another's link on their site. One-way links are when one site references another, like I did in the first paragraph of this post.
According to Gresham, "links from a relevant site it will rate higher than from a non relevant site. The number, or volume, of links is important as well. The more the better."
Links to your site are valuable because they tell the search engines your content is worth looking at, relevant to a topic, etc. Higher relevance means higher rank. Higher rank means it's easier to find. The easier to find, the more visitors. The more visitors, the more potential income.
And for the business blogger, that's the point.
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Membership Sites
I heard some teaching tonite about membership sites. It's a great way to generate recurring income. The key is to create and post enough content that the people want to keep paying.
The key to creating a membership site is a way to manage the access. Standard access customers should not have access to premium content. Premium content customers should be restricted from seeing the content if they don't keep up the subscription. That's the purpose of membership management software.
I've found one that works with WordPress. It's $99 for one site or $199 for up to 5 sites. But at $27 a person, you break even the fourth customer or the fourth month. Learn more here.
The key to creating a membership site is a way to manage the access. Standard access customers should not have access to premium content. Premium content customers should be restricted from seeing the content if they don't keep up the subscription. That's the purpose of membership management software.
I've found one that works with WordPress. It's $99 for one site or $199 for up to 5 sites. But at $27 a person, you break even the fourth customer or the fourth month. Learn more here.
Selling Content with Clickbank
If you don't have content ready to sell, one of the best places to find some is Clickbank. Hundreds (thousands?) of information products that pay you a commission for you to help them sell their products. Normally it's 50%-75% of their permanently-discounted $27 product, but then half of $27 is $13.50, and if you can sell copies for less than that, it's a profit. Sell enough, and you start making money.
It's also a pretty good place to place your own content until you build a list. You've gotta pay out that same commission to others to market your products, but then it's free sales and you capture the emails for future sales. It costs $49 to set up a sales account, but that's a one-time fee.
Give Clickbank a try!
Mike
It's also a pretty good place to place your own content until you build a list. You've gotta pay out that same commission to others to market your products, but then it's free sales and you capture the emails for future sales. It costs $49 to set up a sales account, but that's a one-time fee.
Give Clickbank a try!
Mike
Monitized Content
I used to have a blogspot account, but haven't touched it in a while. So I wasn't watching when Google added a "monetize" tab to the site. As a free content management system, that's pretty remarkable.
I prefer to use WordPress as a more flexible platform, but for the ability to generate income, with wordpress, you have to spend money to make money. By that I mean you have to pay to load the wordpress software onto a hosted account in order to use that software to monetize the site.
I tried to use a free WordPress site to promote a home business and to add click-thru ads. WordPress terms of service don't let you make money with the free site. And since Wordpress connected 4 different blogs to the same email address, when they blew away my blogs for "violation of terms of service," they terminated all 4 in the same night. I couldn't get to the content, couldn't argue the point, couldn't complain. It was done and all that writing was gone.
But Google makes money by selling ads. I've got an AdWords account, and pay to advertise clickbank products. Now that I have a Google-based Blogger account, I see where that content goes. Google will charge me out of one pocket, and then pay me some of that money back if my ads show up on my site as part of Google AdSense.
I'm guessing that if Google is that open to advertising, they'll let me advertise other things, even my own content. I'll give it a try in a future post.
(If you've made cash using your site this way, what worked best? I want to know! I've got orthodontia to pay off and am looking at college tuition coming real soon.)
I prefer to use WordPress as a more flexible platform, but for the ability to generate income, with wordpress, you have to spend money to make money. By that I mean you have to pay to load the wordpress software onto a hosted account in order to use that software to monetize the site.
I tried to use a free WordPress site to promote a home business and to add click-thru ads. WordPress terms of service don't let you make money with the free site. And since Wordpress connected 4 different blogs to the same email address, when they blew away my blogs for "violation of terms of service," they terminated all 4 in the same night. I couldn't get to the content, couldn't argue the point, couldn't complain. It was done and all that writing was gone.
But Google makes money by selling ads. I've got an AdWords account, and pay to advertise clickbank products. Now that I have a Google-based Blogger account, I see where that content goes. Google will charge me out of one pocket, and then pay me some of that money back if my ads show up on my site as part of Google AdSense.
I'm guessing that if Google is that open to advertising, they'll let me advertise other things, even my own content. I'll give it a try in a future post.
(If you've made cash using your site this way, what worked best? I want to know! I've got orthodontia to pay off and am looking at college tuition coming real soon.)
Got Content?
I'm a researcher by nature and by training. BA in History and minors in English and PoliSci. I want to know how things work, and how they came to work that way. And I can make correlations like nobody's business. I can bang out 250 words without a potty break.
I got content. Lots of it.
A few years agot, I read 150 books and as many articles to find out how to make a church work better, how to help it keep from closing its doors. Wrote 40 chapters for a 12-chapter book. They're all still on the hard drive.
I'm an experienced program manager in a technical job that requires degrees I don't have. But I read - all the time. I write reports. I know my way around a contract, and how to anticipate what can go wrong. I can write successful grant proposals, and have won a couple dozen - total around $40M. But the skills are all in my head.
I've been learning marketing. Started with a political blog, and moved on from there. I've got about 8 right now, on a variety of topics. They're fun.
Nothing is earning me extra money. The Turnaround Church book is unpublished. The proposal writing business is on hold. The client's beauty blog is still pending, as are a couple other great ideas.
Then Howie Shwartz gave his list a kick in the pants. Told us to get moving.
A blog is a web-based log of events. This will be my log of getting the content online and into the hands of paying customers.
And you get to watch me write.
I got content. Lots of it.
A few years agot, I read 150 books and as many articles to find out how to make a church work better, how to help it keep from closing its doors. Wrote 40 chapters for a 12-chapter book. They're all still on the hard drive.
I'm an experienced program manager in a technical job that requires degrees I don't have. But I read - all the time. I write reports. I know my way around a contract, and how to anticipate what can go wrong. I can write successful grant proposals, and have won a couple dozen - total around $40M. But the skills are all in my head.
I've been learning marketing. Started with a political blog, and moved on from there. I've got about 8 right now, on a variety of topics. They're fun.
Nothing is earning me extra money. The Turnaround Church book is unpublished. The proposal writing business is on hold. The client's beauty blog is still pending, as are a couple other great ideas.
Then Howie Shwartz gave his list a kick in the pants. Told us to get moving.
A blog is a web-based log of events. This will be my log of getting the content online and into the hands of paying customers.
And you get to watch me write.
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