No More Kontera!

I hinted in my last post that I would be making some changes to this site. I have just removed the Kontera code from this sites template. Kontera provided the 'in-text-content links', which were the words in actual posts that were underlined in orange. This may seem like a fairly minor change, but I assure you it is a tiny one in comparison to the things to come!

Why did I remove them?
1. They hardly made any money. I made a grand total of about $7 with them and they were here for over a month.

2. They make the page slow to load! This page may have loaded super speedy for you, but for me it loaded far to slowly, even with my high-speed broadband!

3. They looked bad. No matter how you disguise them, Ads look bad.

4. They are bad for the readers’ experience. I hadn't bothered to filter out unrelated or scammy sites, so who knows what I was promoting and where I was sending people.

5. I was getting sick of the over-monetisation. I think this is something you can only understand if you have spent a certain amount of time blogging. I have reached the stage where I read a lot of blogs and I am ashamed to say that this site was (and still is) grossly over monetised compared to almost all the blogs I read. I have formed a sense of pride in what I blog and my standards are being raised all the time. No more sneaky tacky ads. Thanks Maki for giving me the nudge I needed.

Will the Adsense go too? Wait and see.

I'm not expecting the removal of Kontera advertising to have a major effect on this blog, but it is a step in the right direction. It’s funny actually, people spend a lot of time waiting with eager anticipation of the day their blog 'comes of age' for acceptance into an advertising group; but losing Kontera is a relief. I have finally dropped a heavy burden.

8 Simple Rules for...Successful Blogging!

They are in order of importance, 1 being the most important.

1. - - --Create good content to act as what everyone has been calling 'linkbait'. This can be done a number of ways:

a) By saying something controversial. This can only be 'used' a few times as it gets old after a while. This is a way of grabbing the attention you deserve and is especially effective if it is the Title of the post. Of course the main content must stand up to the expectations that the controversial title brings.

b) Say something Useful. Your readers are human beings and they want to experience pleasure, be it through reading an entertaining/controversial article, or by learning a valuable lesson. You can think of learning is an investment in future pleasure. I.E. preparation. If your content is so useful that they cannot stop themselves using it then you have succeeded. They may reciprocate with an encouraging comment, a digg/vote or maybe even a link back if they refer to your article.

c) Say something inspiring and LEAD BY EXAMPLE. People don't want to hear that they are 'never going to make it'. People like to hear success stores and they need role models. I have mentioned John Chow as mine and Darren Rowse. This does not mean lie to people about your earnings, but you need to be genuinely ambitious and believe in yourself.

As a rule of thumb, be specific, original, get the grit and use keywords in your articles to make Google smile on you.

I often find it useful to think about content this way:

Thousands of people are going to read what your write (over time). Imagine reading out your article aloud to all of them (if you are shy then use the old trick of imagining them being naked). Would you be proud of what you said? Would they applaud you? Of course you would write in a slightly different style if reading aloud, but otherwise that analogy is sound.

What good content achieves:
- A sense of pride in your blog.
- Keeps readers coming back
- Acts as 'linkbait' to generate inbound links
- Is good for SEO (from the keywords and the linkbacks
- Trust from your readers.

I.E. Good content creates traffic.

2. Submit your site to the major Search engines, such as Google, MSN, DMOZ. They are free but can take some time to list your site so submit it early on. (Especially DMOZ which can take FOR EVER!). The benefits of this are obvious, Google organic searches provides over half of this blogs traffic. Organic Google is also more likely to click on ads unlike Digg traffic which is ‘trained’ not to.

3. Exchange links with sites relevant to your niche and that have more inbound links than your own. This is especially important in the early stages, just to get your blog of the ground. It helps SEO, traffic and all that, because each inbound link is viewed as a 'vote of confidence' in the eyes of the search engines.

4. Submit your blog to ranking systems such as Technorati and Spicypage.

Benefits:
- Useful for your own knowledge about the number of inbound links your blog has.
- Useful for advertising your blog, I.e. gives you the ability to state your blogs rank.
- Great for networking. I used the Technorati searches to find blogs in my own niche which were also slightly more popular. Then I had a look at those blogs, learnt from them myself and requested a link exchange. Spicypage is a great place to do much the same thing, only it is much smaller. Note: Social Networking sites like Mylot can be used in a similar way to make contacts online and promote your blog.

5. Monetise your blog with Ads. These could be with Google AdSense ads orText Link Ads among others. People often make the mistake of doing this first in the desperate hope of getting a couple of clicks. This is pointless. Unless you have a decent amount of quality content your blog will appear to be a sleazy MFA site (made for AdSense) which will have a negative effect on traffic.

6. Join a few trustworthy affiliate programs such as AGLOCO and Bestcashrewards. These will earn you extra income and they give you something else to blog about, although you shouldn’t write about your affiliate programs too often.

7. Submit your better posts to article directories like Digg, and Go Articles and isnare. Don't forget to leave information about yourself and a link to your blog where allowed. Digg is a little different; it is focuses on news about technology, politics, business and gaming so there is not point in going through your old posts and submitting a news post that you write a year ago to digg.

8. Submit your site to niche/smaller directories. This brings traffic directly from the directory as well as giving a helping hand in SEO for the major search engines.

That was an abnormally long post for me. If you made it this far I succeeded!

Google Alerts

I have recently been discovering the delights of Google Alerts. As you all know, to be successful with a blog you need to have the latest information and be up to date with what is going on. Sometimes if you are on of the first to find something out you can get the scoop and get Dugg, which causes a MAJOR influx of traffic to your site.

Google Alerts helps you do this, and potentially provides you with infinite content. You just need to have a Google account and your good to go. You type in a few keywords e.g. 'affiliate programme' and Google will scour the net for the latest things people have been saying using your keywords. (I have found that using 'affiliate programme' as my keyword, Google have found what I have already written on this site and gives it to me again as the latest info which is quite reassuring!).

You can choose the type of site you want Google to crawl (groups, web, blog, news or comprehensive). I use comprehensive, which gives the broadest range of alerts.

Google alerts you by Email and you can choose how often you want them to do this, be it once a week, as it happens or once a day. I go for once a day. This way each day I can have a browse of the alerts which not only makes me more of an expert in my niche, but also provides me with juicy, fresh content.

Don't be alarmed by news you missed, be alerted before everyone else knows about it.

Got Content?

Being Successful Online, whether you are after money or admirers, depends on content. Keyword rich content attracts new readers and new original ideas helps keep the ones you already have. It can be said that the readers you already have are not as valuable as first time readers because they do not click on the ads. They have another purpose and that is to spread the word. Your content must be so useful and wisdom-full that they must come to depend on you. Once they do they will find themselves coming back just to check if you have any new tasty advice and may end up adding a link to your site. If your content is really good they may even recommend you to other bloggers who as for their help.

There is a downside:
Good original content takes TIME to create. It takes time to write it and to 'come up with ideas'. Quite frankly if you are struggling with ideas to write about then you are not spending enough time online digesting other readers ideas. It is very important to 'stay in the game' and not to limit yourself to your current knowledge. You should constantly be learning and getting closer to becoming an expert in your niche.

Content is also the one and only thing on a blog that can bring its creator satisfaction. This is not because it is the most significant way to get traffic to your blog, but because after completing a post you get (well I do) a sense of achievement, which I find to be encouraging. Often it is just what I need to get my ass in gear and do some SEO. It is all to easy to slip into habits of posting less and less until you give up, which has caused the grizzly end of many a nerd.

Regularly posting new content is a MUST in the eyes of the search engines. As written in my previous posts about SEO (search engine optimisation) Google does not like 'dead' sites. This is one of the big advantages blogs have over websites, that they can and MUST be updated at least once a week. Once a day to have visible progress and more than once a day is even better. The search engine spiders crawl though your site picking up the new post and its tags, adding it to their database.

So remember, as long as you keep developing your knowledge you will have something to write about. Feel free to use my amazing knowledge :p to grow your blog!

Content Vs Marketing: Final Showdown

Today we are going to witness a Lord of The Rings scale battle between Content and Marketing.

It is going to be decided once and for all, which is MORE IMPORTANT.

MARKETING is still putting his loin cloth on, allowing CONTENT to give the first devastating blow

CONENT -------> You need content to hook your first readers.

MARKETING ------->(Now fully clothed). Your first readers will not find you without being at least listed in the search engines.

CONTENT -------> bounces back - You need content for your first readers to respect you to be of any worth to you.

MARKETING -------> (loin cloth flailing). Your growth rate will be much higher if you CONTINUE to find new readers.

CONTENT -------> (has no loin cloth because he is pure, revealing everything, hiding nothing - a nudist) - You need content for people to subscribe to your feed.

MARKETING -------> People who read your blog regularly and are hooked on content don't click on the ads anyway, it’s the newcomers that are important.

CONTENT -------> MARKETING should be ashamed of himself, have some pride in your work and get some respect while you’re at it.

MARKETING -------> Would you still be doing this if you were getting no money from it?

CONTENT CROUD - "LOW BLOW!!! BOOO!"

CONTENT -------> (recovering) To be the BEST and make it BIG TIME you are going to need content!

MARKETING -------> (looking exhausted) I cant be bothered to be big time....(these are MARKETING'S last words, who collapses and dies in a very melodramatic way to get attention)

CONTENT -------> Advertisers are getting cleverer and some wont put ads on your site with out content and a regular reader base. (CONTENT then collapses realistically...)


DING DING DING
Its over, the result = DRAW!!!

It seems that CONTENT and MARKETING are equally matched and so are equally important!

We really were not expecting that, there lie two powerful figures.....


SO remember:

YOU NEED CONTENT AND MARKETING TO BE SUCCESSFUL!!