We get people asking us the same question every single day: “I have a blog, how can I make money with it?” It seems like most bloggers started blogging without a revenue model in mind. If that’s your case, this article will give you some ideas on how to profit from your blog. Sell Advertising This can be done in several ways. You can offer banner advertising, text links, and contextual advertising. For banner ads, you can find the advertisers yourself or use advertising networks such as BlogAds, Blogsvertise, and BuySellAds. Text link ads are keywords in your posts that you transform into links to your advertisers. Some good networks are Text-Link-Ads and LinkAdage.

Contextual ads are selected based on the content of your post. They are usually very relevant. Unlike banner and text ads, most contextual ad networks pay you for each click the ad gets as opposed to a fixed fee. Some of the most popular networks are Google AdSense and Chitika.

Sell Your Own Products
If you have several readers and subscribers, write reviews about your own products once in a while. You don’t want to abuse this or your readers will leave. Email your subscribers and offer them a special deal. You can offer physical products and downloadable products (i.e. ebooks, videos, and exclusive information).

Blogs are a great way to build rapport with potential clients. Become an expert in your field. Always be researching and sharing great information. Sales will come without effort if you provide your readers with valuable information and they see you as an authority in your industry. Important: make sure that your readers have a real need for what you have to offer them.

You also need to make sure that you are writing for the right audience. Sure, you can have a lot of fun blogging about politics, your trip to Europe, or your favorite TV show; but it’s a lot harder to monetize those kind of blogs than it is to profit from a blog around a niche you are an expert in and people in your niche actually spend money on what you sell (even if they don’t buy it from you yet).

Sell Your Own Services
Blogs work incredible well for consultants and advisers. What better way to establish authority than writing excellent articles about your field of expertise? And because the gross profit per transaction in professional services is a lot higher than that of retail businesses, you only need a handful of clients to make your blogging efforts worth it.

Sell Someone Else’s Products
Have you ever heard of affiliate marketing? It is a very simple system. You promote someone else’s products and get paid a commission for every sale you make. Some of the most popular affiliate networks are ClickBank, PayDotCom, CommissionJunction, and ShareASale.

Get Paid to Blog
There are several ways you can do this. You can get paid to write reviews about other people’s businesses. This is a great service that will help you find business that pay you for posting about them: PayPerPost.

If you are a really good writer, you can find a blogger job at BloggersForHire and BloggerJobs.

Sell Leads
One of our clients has a real estate blog. She has a form in her blog for people who are searching for real estate agents, mortgage brokers, and real estate attorneys. Her readers can fill out the form and they get three free quotes from qualified professionals. She then charges them for each lead she sends their way.

Sell Merchandise
If your readership is full of raving fans, you can sell them merchandise. Not only they will pay for it but they will also spread the word about the blog every time they wear your blog’s t-shirt.

Beg for Money
If your readers find your posts very useful but you don’t have anything to sell them, ask for donations. Some blogs are getting really creative about this: “Buy Me a Coffee”, “Buy Me a Beer”, and “Help Me Buy an iPhone” are really nice ways to ask for cash.

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Bill Doerr, from the National Networker, interviewed Zeke last week. The interview has been published on Monday and it contains several great tips for entrepreneurs.

Check it out here: http://thenationalnetworker.blogspot.com/2009/01/sales-marketing-timely-truths-for-tough.html

It doesn’t take a genius to realize that competition is tough out there, even more so today, with the economic downturn. Marketers, and in our case, Internet marketers, must search for unexplored territory, a marketing potential which is yet untapped, or hasn’t been fully exploited yet. Flickr offers this tremendous potential for marketing and a unique possibility to showcase your company and products.

Flickr is a social networking site that was launched 5 years ago as a way to enable users to exchange photos and images. As of November 2008, it reportedly hosts 3 billion photos. It is now one of the most popular social media sites. To fully exploit its marketing capabilities, here are some tips that will point you in the right direction.

1. Choose the Right Screen Name
The screen name you choose for your account will become your URL on Flickr, so you should use a competitive keyword. It will most likely get you more traffic than your company’s name.

2. Splurge on a Pro Account
You can get a free account and upload up to 200 images. However, if you wish to use Flickr for marketing purposes, then you must look professional. A pro account will only cost you 25 bucks a year, and it’ll definitely be worth it. The “Pro” badge next to your name will grant you greater authority and the respect of the community.

3. Properly Name and Tag Your Images
It’s very tedious and dull, but if you don’t tag your images, there’s no point in having a Flickr account for marketing purposes. As users search for images, say on Google, or any other search engine, they have better chances of coming across your images if they are properly tagged. The use of good keywords for the titles, tags, and descriptions is absolutely essential. Also, in the descriptions you can include URLs and direct users to your company website, or any other external resource.  Here lies the main marketing power of Flickr, and the reason why if used properly, it could greatly enhance your profits.

4. Participate in Groups
There are lots of companies that already are on Flickr, maybe even some in your own industry. By joining groups and participating actively, you network and create valuable business ties, which will come in handy when you want to exchange links, collaborate on projects, and do business in general. Remember, keeping yourself isolated will not help your business grow. Companies need these connections to thrive.

5. Allow and Promote Reuse
A great deal of bloggers and websites are using images taken from Flickr. They should request your permission to use them, and as soon as you grant them permission, you should be given proper credit, hopefully with a link in return for your willingness to share.

6. Take Advantage of Stats
You may request for stats to be activated for your account. This should take 24 hours. Once you have access to your stats you’ll be able to see metrics on the overall views of your photos, but more importantly on referrals. These allow you to see who is sending traffic to your photo collections.

Flickr, combined with other Internet marketing tactics, is a fantastic tool to promote your business online.

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1. Customize Your URL Your profile information may be indexed by search engines. LinkedIn profiles receive a pretty high rank in Google. Instead of using the default URL, customize your own by using your company’s name. If you’re a small start up, it would be better if you used a really great keyword instead of your actual name. If nobody knows you, they won’t be searching for your name, so you have better chances of ranking higher with a competitive keyword. And don’t forget to select the “Full View” option.

2. Give Your Profile Greater Visibility
To strengthen the visibility of what is essentially your business profile, use your customized LinkedIn URL as a signature when you leave comments in business or industry-specific blogs.

3. Optimize Labels
Don’t forget to add your website, blog, or any other relevant URLs to your profile.  LinkedIn allows up to three.  In the section labeled “Websites”, most LinkedIn profiles use the labels “My Company”, “My Blog” , “My Portfolio”.  You have the option to customize this and add your own text for the label, say your company’s name. Use the drop down menu to “Other” and just add the text. Why is this important? It’s just a detail. Not at all. As search engines crawl the web your name won’t be lost among all the “My Company”s. You won’t get massive amounts of traffic driven to your company’s website from this alone, but it’ll surely help. Once again, for this to work, you must set your public profile settings to “Full View”.

4. Use the Right (Key)Words to Define Yourself
Directly below your name you’ll see a headline. Now, this could be a little tricky. You should use words that clearly define you or your business, but, at the same time use keywords that are relevant to your industry and will allow others to easily find you.

5. Promote Your Blog
With applications like Blog Link and the WordPress App, LinkedIn allows you to sync your blog posts with your LinkedIn profile. This enables you to keep everyone in your network updated and provides greater exposure to your business or name.

6. Use the e-mail signature
LinkedIn offers you the possibility to create a custom e-mail signature in Outlook, Outlook Express, and Mozilla Thunderbird with a short version of your LinkedIn profile and a link to your complete profile.

7. Add a Profile Picture
This is not a SEO-specific strategy, but adding an image to your profile, whether it is your own friendly face, or company logo, will go a long way towards establishing the connections you want.  It’ll make your profile look more credible, professional, and serious.

None of these strategies alone can guarantee increased traffic to your website or greater exposure. However, if they’re combined, they will greatly enhance your chances of improving visibility for your business, reaching the customers or business contacts you seek, and ultimately closing more deals.

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How many of you have ever wandered around a department store looking for a simple but elusive item? How many times have you gone from one department to the next wishing someone would tell you exactly where to find what you’re looking for? As a customer this is a frustrating experience, and the store just might lose you as a customer. Here’s a question: When someone clicks on your banner or PPC ad, are they directed to your home page? If your answer is yes, then you may have many customers needlessly wandering around your department store, too.

So, for successful Web marketing, here’s where landing pages come in. A landing page is the page visitors should reach after clicking on your banner or PPC ad. The landing page has two main goals: 1) convince your visitor to stay, and 2) move the visitor toward the action you want them to take.

Great! How do we accomplish these two goals?

1. Use a Headline that Clearly Refers to the Ad They Clicked On
Experts agree this is critical to an effective landing page. Your visitors saw something that caught their eye, peaked their interest, and that’s why they clicked on the ad. What they see next, the place the ad leads them to, should correspond with what got them interested in the first place. This is what will maintain their interest for a while longer and keep them from clicking on the back button.

2. Give Your Visitors a Clear Call to Action
Whether you want them to click on the “add to cart” button, call a toll-free number, or download a free trial of your software, this must be crystal clear, and the copy on the landing page should lead them to take this step.

3. Write Quality Copy
Here, the word “quality” says it all. Write a clear, persuasive message. Present benefits, advantages to your target visitor, why they should consider your offer; this is exactly what they want! Don’t go off on a tangent. Needless to say, there should be no spelling or typographical errors. And use vocabulary that is appropriate to your target audience.

4. Remove Clutter
This goes especially for navigation bars, images, and links to other pages within or outside your web page. Remember, you want to keep the visitor focused on your landing page until you can convince him to take the action you want him to take. You can’t afford to have him wandering around your website or worse yet, leave your website entirely.

5. Test Your Landing Page
If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. You might have to test several landing pages until you find the one that gets you the conversions you want.

And this is our ultimate goal: conversions! That is the metric you should really care about, the one that takes the customer from “Just looking!” to “Where do I sign?” If you design your landing pages with this important goal in mind, then you’re in business!

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Online marketing is a big part of any company’s marketing plan. But when it comes to online marketing, although companies recognize how important it is, they don’t know much about it. That’s when they figure out that they need professional help promoting their businesses on the Internet. At this point, a new challenge arises: “How can I know for sure what Internet marketing agency is right for me?” That is an excellent question and not many people know the answer to it. Almost everyone has gotten some kind of advice about hiring the right attorney or accountant, but most people are in the dark when it comes to hiring an online marketing agency.

Step 1: Start by Contacting the Agencies that Found You
A lot of very successful agencies publish Internet marketing tips on a regular basis. If you find these tips useful and they seem to know what they are talking about, give them a call.

Step 2: Search for Agencies
A successful search for a marketing agency will be within the first results of Google for terms like “Internet marketing firma” and “online marketing agency”. If they made it to the top positions, they are likely to be able to do the same thing for you too.

Step 3: Pre-Select Five Agencies and Interview Them
After you review the websites of several agencies, you will find about five that you really like. It’s time to start making some phone calls. These are some really good questions to ask them:

• How long have you been in business for?
• Who are your clients?
• What are the most significant results that you have achieved for your clients?
• How could you help me? (do they talk about “giving your company exposure in the online global market” or about “helping you increase your revenues by 77%”? Always go with agencies that  focus on your bottom line)

How exactly would you make that happen? (again, look for specifics. If they suggest doing Search Engine Optimization, what exactly are they going to do to help you rank high? If they suggest building links for you, how many and from what websites?)

Step 4: Check References
This is the most important part of the process, so please don’t skip it. Some agencies are great at selling their services but below average when it comes to promoting your business. Other agencies are just the opposite. Don’t let words convince you; look for facts. Clients will tell you things like they really are. Asking a client is the better way to find out if a company meets deadlines, if they deliver what they promise, and if the campaigns that they are running have a positive ROI. Ask how long they’ve been working with that agency for. If the agency is doing a great job and making them money, the client is likely to have worked with them for a long time and is planning to stay with them for a while.

Step 5: Ask for Proposals
These need to be very detailed. You are not buying a Black 2GB iPod Nano (they are all the same); you are buying “marketing” so you need to know exactly what they will be doing for you so you can compare apples with apples. Last month a prospect requested a proposal from us. Our quote was almost twice as much as our competitor’s. But the other company didn’t include details in the proposal. This was a Search Engine Optimization project. We suggested to the potential client to ask for a comprehensive proposal showing everything that they would do for her. When they did it, it became clear why their quote was half the size as ours. They were going to do one quarter of what we were offering. So they were in fact twice as expensive! Always ask for detailed proposals.

Step 6: Hire an Agency on a Trial Basis
If someone wants to make you commit to a 12-month period, say something along the lines of “I’d love to. I will sign that agreement as soon as you can prove me that you are as good as you say you are”. Once you’ve signed an agreement, your hands are tied. Ask for a trial period in which you can evaluate if you feel comfortable working with that agency and that they are delivering everything they said they would.

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About six months ago I was looking at the web stats of one of our clients. His visits went from an average of 30 a day to 150. When I checked who was sending him so much traffic I was very surprised. It was CNN! I went to CNN’s website and I discovered that they have a widget at the end of some of their articles where they show related blog posts. My client’s post was there. I started doing some research on the subject and I learned how you can get your blog featured on CNN, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Newsweek, Time, Fox News, Reuters, the Washington Post, and CBS. Although all the links that you might get from them are “no-follow” (search engines don’t count them when they assign rankings), they can give you a good deal of exposure, traffic, and credibility. You can tell your clients that your business have been featured on the New York Times website! I am sure that at this point you are thinking “ok, I got it! Now tell me how I can make that happen for my business!” Ok, ok. Follow these steps:

List your blog on BlogBurst
BlogBurst feeds Reuters, Fox News, and USA Today.

List your blog on Sphere
Sphere feeds CNN, Wall Street Journal, Time, Reuters, CBS, Washington Post, AOL, and Newsweek.

List your blog on BlogRunner
BlogRunner feeds Wall Street Journal and New York Times.

Write a Review
This is a very important step. Skip it and your blog will never get featured. Let’s say that CNN published an article on one of Obama’s speeches. You need to write a post about that article and link to the news source. CNN has to consider your post relevant to their article in order to feature it.

Be patient. Not all your posts will be featured. That’s OK; you only need one or two in order to gain some visibility and credibility. Now go get your posts published on CNN.com!

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“No man is an island,” said English poet John Donne centuries ago. And neither is your website. With no inbound or outbound links, what’s the point, really? It is worthless. Merely decorative. It won’t work for you. So you have made good use of competitive keywords and included them throughout your website. Big deal! If you can´t go the distance, your business will never thrive, and while good keyword usage is recommended, it just isn´t enough. Link building is perhaps one of the key aspects to search engine optimization, along with keyword usage. And here are 33 of the best link building tactics, guaranteed to increase traffic to your website and boost your profits.

1. Just ask nicely. Simply ask visitors to your site to link to you. And they will, as long as you have an engaging website, with relevant information, a unique view, in other words, if you offer something that not many others do.
2. Provide a “link to us” page. Make sure it includes stuff like URL(s), logo and an anchor text they can use.

3. Create interesting lists (ahem!). Write a “101” list or a “Top Ten Tips to…” list. This kind of document becomes an “authority” opinion and will naturally get links.

4. Offer to be a guest writer. Send an email to a magazine, ezine, blog, or online journal, and let them know you’d be interested in contributing an article to share your valuable expertise.

5. Offer testimonials. If there is a tool you’ve tested or bought recently, go to their website and see if there is a testimonials section. Write in with your review/opinion and kindly ask them to link back to you.

6. Get your website listed. Submit it to several directories, but remember that quality matters, so submit it to the good ones.

7. Submit Your Blog and RSS Feed. Submit to Blog directories and RSS submission sites.

8. Make use of Web 2.0 resources. Use MySpace, Facebook, MSN Spaces, whatever you feel most comfortable with, to promote your site.

9. Write articles for Hubpages. Submit quality articles, comment on other hubs, post in the forums, and you’ll get a hubscore plus quality links.

10. Post free ads. Websites like Free Ad Blog and Free Blog Post allow you to post two to three links to your site.

11. Participate on Blogs. Leave your comments, network with them, email them, link to them, and they’ll surely link back to you.

12. Make many different Blogs. On sites like Blogger or Wordpress.

13. Post on forums and groups. Find the largest and the best in your field.

14. Post in Ebay Blogs. Post your link within your blog, and you can actually say you have a link from Ebay!

15. Acknowledge the contribution of experts. Write about them, review one of their books or articles, or even compile a list of experts like, “The Five Definitive Experts on…”. There’s a good chance they’ll notice you and link back to you.  Interview a guru or get permission from him to post his work, articles, e-book.

16. Make use of local resources. Get a link from your local chamber of commerce.

17. Sponsor an event. These all link to their sponsors.

18. Offer useful tools. Calculators, conversion, translation tools; they’re naturals for getting lots of links, as people are often in need of good, quality tools.

19. Find out which websites link to your competitors. And get them to link to you, as well.

20. Join an affiliate program. But make sure you choose a good one.

21. Win awards for your website. There are plenty of reputable award sites like webbyawards.com or webaward.org.

22. Article submission. Submit articles to websites like Ezine Articles or Goarticles. Just contribute quality, relevant content and send it in.

23. Write reviews. On sites like Amazon or ePinions.

24. Become an authority. It is most likely you already are an authority in your business, so answer questions on Yahoo Answers and post your content everywhere.

25. Post in classifieds sites, like Craigslist and USFreeAds.

26. Create a Squidoo lens. Advertise one or all of your websites on Squidoo.com.

27. Submit guides to Work.com. The nifty thing about this one is that if your guides are approved, you can include as many followed links as you want.

28. Write an article for Wikipedia. Although you may not be able to directly link to your website, include links to other pages that link to yours.

29. Exchange links. Link to other blogs/websites from yours, but which provide relevant content, and ask them to kindly reciprocate.

30. Use your forum signature. Please leave your name, message and link! There are lists of directories that allow signature links.

31. Oops! You forgot my link! Find websites that mention your company or products but don’t provide the direct HTML link. Simply send them a friendly email and request the link.

32. Submit your design to CSS directories.

33. Give exclusive scoops. Provide newsworthy stories to bloggers who’ll be dying for the exclusive and will be more than willing to post it.

There is one thing that must be stressed and it cannot be emphasized enough. As long as you provide quality, relevant, useful information and treat other website owners/users or bloggers with respect, you’ll never go wrong. There’s nothing wrong with asking for links (ask and ye shall receive, right?) as long as you don’t badger people into it. Sometimes a little flattery goes a long way.

Links are essential because they connect us all so we may form one global community. It’s not about competing to get more links or taking links from others. It’s not a link popularity contest. It’s all about sharing the link love.

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Do you want to know how you can GROW your business during these tough economic times? Do you want to learn Internet Marketing the smart way?

I will be hosting an Internet Marketing Workshop in Denver. If you are serious about promoting your company online, you HAVE to be there. Some of the things you are going to learn at this workshop:

- How to get a first page on Google

- How to choose the right keywords to rank for

- How to get people to link to your website and talk about your business

- How you can get hundreds of visitors to your site by writing and publishing articles

- How you can put your videos in front of thousands of potential customers

- How you can create effective viral content and grab the attention of millions of people

- How you can get an army of commission-based sellers promoting your products

- Pay per Click marketing: How you can get twice the leads and pay half as much

Workshop Topic: “How You Can Grow Your Business Online During this Economic Crisis”

When: February 25 between 5 pm and 7 pm MST

Where: Colorado Free University, 7653 E. 1st Pl., Denver, CO 80230 - View Map

Cost: $0 (no cost, free, zero, nada)

Spots Available: only 15 (so I can give personalized advice to everybody)

Agenda:

1. Elements of a Successful Website

The most common web design mistakes and how to avoid them.

2. Traffic-Acquisition Tactics

How you can get a huge number of qualified visitors at a very low cost. We will talk about Search Engine Optimization, Pay per Click Marketing, Social Network Marketing, Article Marketing, Video Marketing, Viral Marketing, and Affiliate Marketing.

3. Conversion Optimization

How you can increase your conversion rates and profit more from your existing traffic.

4. Case Analysis

We will analyze three companies and I will share with everyone what I would do to grow their online presence, traffic, and revenues. We will only have time to analyze three companies during the workshop. If you want yours to be one of them, please let me know when you register.

5. Questions and Answers

I will spend the last 30 minutes answering all your questions.

How to Sign Up: Send Us an Email with your name, company, website, email address, phone number, and let us know if you want us to review your company’s online strategy during the session.

We get this question all the time. People usually say “I’m not going to pay you guys if you can’t tell me exactly what position I am going to get and by when”. It actually makes sense. When I buy something, I want to know exactly what I’m getting. Unfortunately, no accurate answer can be given when it comes to Search Engine Optimization.

So when people ask that question, our answer is always the same: “It depends”. And that’s when they ask the next question: “Depends on what?”. Well, that’s something that we do have an answer for.

What Keywords Are They After?
Getting a first position for “mortgage” is significantly more difficult than getting it for “mortgage for commercial properties in Naples, FL”. The broader a keyword is, the harder it is to rank for it.

Where Are They Standing Now?
Ranking a new website is a lot harder than ranking one that is 10 years old, has 1,000 incoming links, and several pages of great content.

How Competitive the Industry Is?
This could make all the difference. We check how much SEO the top ten websites for a given keyword have been doing. If they’ve been doing Search Engine Optimization for several years, it will take more time to outrank them.

Are They Interested in The Local or Global Market?
One thing is to rank first for “tax return services” and a different thing is to rank for “tax return services in santa ana, california”. Rankings for local markets can be achieved quickly, whereas global markets will take much longer.

What We Tell Our Clients When They Ask
First we tell them “it depends” and we explain all the items above. Then we do some research and we come up with an estimate number. If we think it’s going to take 8 months we tell them that it could take anywhere between 9 and 18 months. That way, they are always happy when we get them that so-desired first position in less time. But imagine how upset they would be if we told them 8 months and it actually takes 10.

A Word of Warning
There are hundreds of Search Engine Optimization companies that will tell you whatever it takes to get your business. They will tell you that you will be first in three months if that’s what you want to hear. Three months down the road, you’ll be in position #134 and they will have taken a big chunk of your money. They will blame Google for changing their algorithm and your competitors for doing more SEO than you.

SEO Takes Time
One company hired us last October to work on their rankings. For their main keyword, we took them from position #274 to #130 the first month, to position #71 the second month, #36 the third month, and #17 the fourth month. Because they didn’t get that first position in four months (this was a very competitive market) they decided to stop working with us. Now they are back in position #34. Almost nobody goes to the fourth page of Google’s results. You need to be patient when you hire an SEO company. Look at the trend. If you don’t see any progress at all, fire them. But give them time to get you that first position. Google only has 10 top results and chances are that all those 10 websites have been doing SEO for a long time. It will take you a while to get there too.