One of the best known affiliate programs is the Amazon Associates program. This program, which is free to join, allows you to generate links and widgets to showcase Amazon products on your blog and to collect a commission when people follow the links and buy from Amazon.
Amazon Associates has a short sign up page that requires you to provide a valid e-mail address, payment information (name, address, bank account) and the URL of your blog (make sure your blog already exists). Once your application is approved, you can begin generating links to display on your blog.
Single product links that fit into appropriate posts usually work best. Log in to your Amazon Associates account and from the front page click on Build Links/Widgets. A large variety of widget and link categories are displayed.
Product links are useful for linking to a single product. The search widget is useful for providing an Amazon search feature to your readers without having them leave your blog. Click the "Add to your Web page" button next to your desired type of widget. To create a product link, the first step is to search for the desired product on Amazon. Just key your search terms into the box and click "Go".
From the search results returned, find the correct product and click the "Get HTML" button next to it.
On the page below, select the appropriate options for your link. The preview area of the screen will change as you select options so you can see exactly how your link will look on your blog.
After copying the HTML code, go to your Blogger account and select the Page Elements sub-tab from the Template tab. Click on Add a New Page Element in the appropriate part of the blog and select an HTML/Javascript page element from the list in the dialog box. Paste the HTML code you copied from the Amazon site into the empty dialog box.
When you click the orange "Save Changes" button, the link will be displayed on your blog. When your readers click the Amazon link and follow it to Amazon, you'll receive a commission on any products that they buy.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Making Money on a Blog: Amazon Associates
Making Money on a Blog: Google AdSense Part 2
Website users are accustomed to being able to conduct searches to find the information they need. Putting a search box on your blog that enables users to search either your blog or the Internet is a great idea. Offering this feature using Google AdSense for Search makes it a valuable feature to you since clickable ads that can make you money are served up with the search results.
To set up AdSense for Search, log into your AdSense account and from the AdSense Setup tab select the Products sub-tab. From the list of products, click on AdSense for Search to display the following screen:
Click the radio button next to Google WebSearch + SiteSearch to allow searching on both your blog and the Web. Next, key in the URL of the main page of your blog. Page down to the bottom half of the screen as shown below:
Click the radio button next to the URL of your blog in the search box. This will ensure that the search box searches your site (not the Internet) by default. It is important to try to keep people on your blog for as long as possible. Adjust the other options to change the design and color of the box until you get it the way you want it. As you change options the box will change so you can see exactly what you are getting. Click Continue when done to proceed to the following screen:
There are additional color options for the search box on this page. You can also provide the URL of your logo to display in the search box. Also, you can determine whether the results of the search are displayed in the existing window or whether a new window opens to display the results. When done, click Continue to display the last page.
This screen provides the HTML code for the search box you specified on the previous screens. You do not need to know HTML to use the code. Merely highlight and copy the code exactly.
Back on Blogger, go to the Template tab and the Page Elements sub-tab. In the section where you wish to place the search box, click on Add a Page Element and select HTML/JavaScript from the choices provided in the dialog box. This displays the Configure HTML/JavaScript dialog box.
Paste the HTML code from the AdSense site into the large box. Add a title if you prefer. Clicking the orange "Save Changes" button will insert the search box onto your blog.
When someone keys in a search term and clicks Search, this results screen is displayed.
Now your readers can find what they are looking for and you have the opportunity to make some more money!
Making Money on a Blog: Google AdSense Part 1
Google AdSense provides you with a variety of methods to make cash from your blog readers by serving ads up to your blog automatically. Registering for AdSense is free and requires only filling out a relatively short series of forms. You need to have a valid e-mail address and provide them with a telephone number and payment information. You also will need to give them your blog URL so they can review and approve it. Make sure your blog has been up and operating for a few weeks before applying or you might be rejected. You can also be rejected for having a blog that contains:
- Violent content
- Racial intolerance
- Advocacy against any individual, group, or organization
- Pornography
- Adult or mature content
- Hacking/cracking content
- Illicit drugs and drug paraphernalia
- Excessive profanity
- Gambling or casino-related content
Check out all of Google's restrictions here.
Assuming you don't violate Google's guidelines, your blog should be approved for AdSense content within a few days. As shown below, there are four main types of content that are useful to display on blogs.
Google AdSense for Content is very easy to deploy on a Blogger site (once you are registered with AdSense and your blog is approved).
From the Template tab in Blogger select the Page Element sub-tab. Then click Add a Page Element in the section of your blog template where you wish to add the AdSense content. This displays the Configure AdSense dialog box shown below.
There are a variety of shapes to choose from so pick the best one for the area of your blog (vertical shapes work best in the side column of a blog). You have a lot of control over the color scheme for the ad area so you can make it blend seamlessly into your template. When you are happy with the way the ad looks in the preview section, click the orange "Save Changes" button to save your selection and start displaying the ads on your blog.
Now, whenever a reader clicks on the links displayed on your blog, money will be credited to you in your AdSense account.
How Bloggers Make Money
There are numerous ways that a well written blog that attracts a lot of readers (traffic) can make money. The key to attracting readers is generating well written, informative, original posts on a regular basis. So new bloggers really need to concentrate on generating content. But once you have had your blog up and running for a while, you can start to explore various methods of generating revenue.
Although there are numerous methods for generating revenue, these are extremely popular:
Advertising Programs - Almost all web pages have some type of adverting now and blogs are no exception. The most well known contextual ad program is Google Adsense. Since Google owns Blogger as well as Adsense, it is extremely easy to integrate Google Adsense ads into a blog hosted on Blogger. Other popular ad programs are DoubleClickTribal Fusion, Clicksor, Adgenta, Azoogle Ads, Peak Click, AVN and Kanoodle (to name but a few). But you don't want to clutter up your blog with too many ads and risk driving off readers because your blog looks like it exists only to make money. So start out with just Google Adsense and see how it goes.
Affiliate Programs - These are programs which pay you for referring your blog readers to other sites where they purchase goods or services. Usually you are paid a commission on what the customers buy by following the links displayed on your web site to the affiliate's site. One of the largest programs (and easiest to join and manage) is Amazon Associates (from Amazon.com). Other large affiliate programs such as Commission Junction, Linkshare and Clickbank provide you with opportunities to direct customers to a wide variety of merchants. But there are many other smaller affiliate programs which you can use on your site. Affiliate programs are often used in conjunction with specific posts. For instance, if you are running a blog that reviews new digital equipment and you create a post about a new digital camera, you may want to provide a link through the Amazon Associates program to allow your readers to buy the cameras at Amazon.com.
Paid to Blog Programs - People with products and services to sell have discovered that bloggers are more than willing to write posts about their companies in return for compensation. PayPerPost is the grandaddy of all the paid blogging services. Other sites that pay you to blog are PayU2Blog, Blogitive, Blogsvertise, LoudLaunch, V7N, and Smorty. You need to have an established blog site (usually at least 90 days old) with a minimum number of posts to have your blog approved for posting opportunities. After it is approved, you are presented with opportunities and given guidelines for writing posts about products or services. Compensation ranges from $5 for simple 100 to 150 word posts up to hundreds of dollars for posts that include originally produced video. Many of the higher dollar opportunities require you to have a certain Google page rank to participate, but there are many $5 to $20 opportunities for sites without a high page rank.
Please click the button to join PayPerPost as my affiliate.
Donations - Readers appreciate a well written blog and some readers will show their appreciation by making a donation to support your blog. Paypal tip jars or donation buttons make it quick and easy for loyal readers to give you a couple of their hard earned dollars.
Sponsored Ads - In addition to advertising programs such as Google Adsense, many companies are paying bloggers to directly advertise on their sites (usually through buttons or banners). Although this is not something that usually happens to beginning bloggers, it is a goal to aim for when your blog garners a respectable amount of traffic (visitors) and a decent Google page rank.
Although there are many other ways bloggers can make money, these ideas should keep beginning bloggers busy for a while.
Marketing Your Blog 1: Get Indexed in Search Engines
You can write the most brilliant blog ever created. And it won't do you a bit of good if no one can find it! You need to find ways to allow potential readers to find your blog. In this post, we'll discuss the first step you should take...getting your blog indexed by search engines.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an emerging science the goal of which is to increase the number of visitors (volume of traffic) that a blog (or website) receives from search engine results. Search engine results are the equivalent of billboards along the highway. Just as billboards direct people to a product or service, links in search engine results drive people to relevant blogs (or websites). All search engines use different proprietary methods to analyze the contents and keywords of blogs for purposes of generating search results. Google, the big Kahuna of search engines, gives every web page a rank (called page rank) and pages with a high rank appear in search results before lower ranked pages. Many factors go into generating a web page's rank score such as key words, relevance to search terms (which is based on key words) and quality of links to the site from other pages. Most experts agree that your page rank will eventually increase as your visibility on the Internet increases.
Therefore, having your site linked to by other websites (preferably ones with a high page rank) and indexed by a variety of search engines will help your site become more visible. As a starting point, you should submit your URL to a number of search engines to increase the chances that a search engine will index your site. Most search engines do not guarantee that they will list your site (or that it will rank highly in search results). But by submitting your URL to the search engine, you ensure that the search engines' automated agents that crawl the web looking for sites to index should eventually locate your site.
You only need to submit the main URL of your blog, not the URL for each individual blog posting that you have. For instance, when submitting this blog for indexing, we only submitted the URL http://bloggingacrosscurriculum.blogspot.com.
Below is a listing of links to search engine submission pages. You certainly don't need to submit your URL to every site on the list. But the top 4 are an absolute minimum.
List of Search Engine Submission Links (List obtained from Tips for New Bloggers)
Advanced Lesson 1: Adding More Page Element Options to Your Template
In Basic Lesson 7, you saw how easy it was to add page elements to the right hand (or left hand) column of your blog or to add elements at the end of the blog. But what if you want to add an element below the header (such as our Firefox link on this blog) or before your blog posts? As shown below, most standard Blogger templates don't offer the option to add elements in these places.
You can remedy this situation by following the simple instructions at the Tips for New Bloggers blog site. This requires editing the HTML code of your Blogger template, which is very easy to do (you don't need to know HTML coding...just follow the directions).
To make changes to your Blogger template, click on Layout for your blog on the Blogger Dashboard. This puts you on the Template tab. Click the Edit HTML sub-tab to display the HTML of your template. The top of this screen will look like this:
Before making modifications to your template's HTML code, it is always a good idea to back up your existing template. This enables you to go back to your original template if you muck up editing the HTML code. Click the link to save a copy of your template to your hard drive.
Just follow the step-by-step instructions at the Tips for New Bloggers site. After making the HTML modifications, clicking your Page Elements sub-tab should give you a screen that looks similar to this:
You now have more places where you can add content!
Thursday, October 4, 2007
Basic Lesson 9: Adding Lists of Web Links to Your Blog
In the course of web surfing, you probably run across web sites that readers of your blog might find useful. Adding a list of useful links to your blog is easy. Go to Template tab of your blog and select the Page Elements sub-tab. Click on one of the Add a Page Element links.
The Choose a New Page Element dialog box (shown below) is now displayed. Find the element called Link List and click on Add to Blog button below it.
The Configure Link List dialog box (below) is now displayed. First, type in a title for your link list. Then enter the URL for the first web site. Enter a name for the site as you want it to appear on the link list. Then click the Add Link button to add the web site to the Link List. When you have added all of your links, click the orange Save Changes button. You can always come back later and add more links or delete existing links.
The Link List you entered is now displayed on your blog.
