100k Job Trading From Home

Blogs and blogging are sweeping the internet. They are all the rage as a hobby, writing exercise, and even a career for some. In fact, it is even becoming more common that bloggers are seeking a way to make money. Be it via advertising or affiliations, they each have their own way of pursuing that writing career by way of the blog. There is another way, though. There is an alternate way to make a little extra money by blogging. That way is not unlike the way waiters, cab drivers, and even bellhops add to their income: the tip. Wait a minute! How do you get tips from your blogging? There are ways, and if you read on you will see that they aren’t as difficult as you might think.

First of all, if you want people to tip you for your blog, you have to give them a reason for doing it. You need to be providing very good information or highly entertaining copy that makes them feel like you earned it. In essence, you are the web equivalent to a street performer by working for tips. So, like that street performer, you owe your audience something that makes them feel like you are worth their money. So polish your writing, update it often, keep it fresh, and stay true to the topics your readers are used to. If you are all over the place, you won’t be able to build the loyal audience necessary when you go to start asking for tips. Basically, the start of it all is your content. Just like with any other money making web venture, your content is going to go a long way. So to get started earning tips from your blogging, make sure you give the audience a reason.

Once you have your content set up, you need to promote it. Asking for tips won’t do you a bit of good if you don’t have an audience to ask. Market your blog, market your topics, and target those search engines. Don’t do any of it at the expense of the quality of your content, but make sure you are getting something going in the way of marketing. Register with blog directories, post to other people’s blogs, and generally get your name and blog site out there so that you will drive an audience into what is hopefully quality, informative, and or entertaining content. Again, if there is nobody at the site then asking for a tip is not going to do you a lot of good.

Next, since you have set up your content to be useful and entertaining to a particular audience and you have begun to get your blog marketed, you are almost ready for those tips. However, there needs to be some sort of vehicle available to your readers to get the tips to you. I mean if they have to do a lot of work to get money to you then you probably shouldn’t count on the money rolling in. There are a number of online methods available for receiving payments via email or the web. It would be wise to have one located prominently on your blog so that if a reader is stuck with the desire to tip you, he or she can do so with ease and without a lot of time that may result in rethinking the tip. Remember, this is something you want to happen when your quality and entertainment is fresh in their minds.

Finally, if you really want to earn tips from blogging, then you should probably ask for them in some way. You can do so in the blog posts or even with some sort of message on the main page of your blog that states that tips are appreciated and are the way you fund the blog. Either way, you need to make it clear to the readers that you are reliant on their generosity without sounding like you are hard selling, or worse, begging.

Blogging can be a lot of fun, and can actually make you a little money if you are willing to work hard at it. One way of making that money is by earning tips from your readers. There are some things that you need to get in place though to make that work. Make sure you have quality content, market your site, set up a method for receiving the tips, and be sure to ask for them. If you do those things, then you can be earning tips from your blog before you know it.

1. Decide on a stand alone domain name www.myblog.com or directory of existing site www.mysite.com/blog. Sub domain is also an option blog.mysite.com. Avoid hosted services that do not allow you to use your own domain name!
2. Obtain and install customizable blog software – WordPress and Moveable Type are my favorites.
3. Customize blog look and feel templates – aka design.
4. Research keywords and develop a glossary – Keyword Discovery, WordTracker, SitePoint, SEOBook Keyword Research.
5. Optimize the blog:
* Template optimization – RSS subscription options, social bookmark links, HTML code, Unique title tags, URLs, Sitemap
* Add helper plugins specific to WordPress or MT
* Create keyword rich categories (reference your keyword glossary)
6. Enable automatic trackback and ping functionality.
7. Create Feedburner Pro account and enable feed tracking.
8. Setup Google acount for Sitemap, validate and prep for future submission.
9. Identify authoritative blogs, web sites and hubs for outbound resource links and blogroll.
10. Format archived posts, related posts.
11. Submit RSS feed and Blog URL to prominent RSS and Blog directories / search engines.
12. Engage in an ongoing link building campaign.
13. If podcast or video content are available, submit to Podcast and Vlog directories.
14. Submit blog url to paid directories with categories for blogs – Yahoo, BOTW, bCentral, WOW, JoeAnt.
15. Optimize and distribute a press release announcing blog.
16. Request feedback or reviews of your blog in relevant forums, discussion threads. If you have a resourceful post that will help others, point to it.
17. Research and comment on relevant industry related blogs and blogs with significant centers of influence.
18. Monitor inbound links, traffic, comments and mentions of your blog – Google Alerts, Technorati, Blogpulse, Yahoo News, Ask Blogs and Feeds.
19. Make contact with related bloggers on AND offline if possible.
20. Use social networking services, forums and discussion threads to connect with other bloggers. If they like your stuff, they will link to you.

There are many factors that make blogs much better than normal WebPages including the speed at which blogs are indexed, ability to submit to blog directories & normal directories, pings and track backs. All these little things can help drive more traffic to blogs. Here are 14 popular techniques you can use:

1.) Submit to My Yahoo! When you submit your own RSS to My Yahoo it is indexed by Yahoo.

2.) Submit to Google’s Reader. When you submit your own blog RSS to Google’s Reader the Google Blog Search will index your site.

3.) Add a relevant link directory to your blog and trade links like a demon possessed! Although it may take more time than simply submitting to a search engine one time, this method is perhaps the best way to drive traffic to your site. Use software such as Zeus to speed up the link trading process.

4.) Use ping sites like ping-o-matic. Ping your site every time you add a new post.

5.) Submit your blog to traditional search engines such as AltaVista, and MSN.

6.) Submit your blog to traditional directories such as DMOZ. Directories (particularly DMOZ) increase relevance with Google. DMOZ is very picky, but what do you have to lose by trying?

7.) Submit to as many RSS Directories and Search Engines as possible. This is a simple but repetitive process that can be done with software such as RSS SUBMIT.

8.) Comment on other blogs. Do not just leave short, lazy comments like “I agree.” Leave well thought out replies that will force readers to wonder “who wrote this?”

9.) Use track backs. If there is a blog that you refer to or quote and it is highly relevant to your subject, leave a track back. It increases your link popularity and may even score a few interested readers from the linked site.

10.) Go offline. Use newspaper ads, public bulletin boards, business cards, even stickers to let as many people as possible know your blog exists.

11.) Add a link to your blog in your e-mail signature block.

12.) Use Groups (Usenet). Find a relevant group on Google groups, Yahoo groups, MSN groups or any of the thousands of other FREE group services and find like minded people and talk with them. Make sure your use your blog URL like it is your name.

13.) Use Forums. Forums are one of the best places to go for advice. Go to forums and find problems to solve. Make sure you leave your blog name, but be tactful about it; some forums get annoyed with those who selfishly drop a few links to their own site and leave.

14.) Tag your website. Tagging is a new idea that has erupted across the web. Sites like http://Del.icio.us, Technorati and many others have a social feature that allows you to place your article under keywords or “tags” that everyone interested in that tag can see.

Although these are some of the most popular ways to drive traffic to your blog, do not limit your self to tips and lists. Use your imagination and you will come up with thousands of ways to drive traffic to your blog!

Limit the number of advertising units that you carry on the page

Whilst Google will allow you to have three advertising blocks on each page, my testing has indicated that, in the vast majority of cases, you should include not more than a maximum of two ad blocks as a maximum. In fact, what you’re doing if you include three blocks is reducing your income, rather than increasing it. If three ad blocks feature 12 individual ads, then those are ads from the 12 advertisers who are willing to pay the most to Google, and, by extension, the ads shown in the bottom advertising block are the ones that will pay you the least.
Every time someone clicks on one of those ads, they will most likely not make a second click on one of the higher ads, and you are, therefore, effectively trading possible clicks on the ads that pay you most for clicks on those that pay very little.

Leave your visitors guessing

Leave your content materials unfinished, add an ‘ellipses’  (three dots at the end of the line of text) and then show AdSense advertising directly underneath:

This could suggest to the reader that they have to click on the ad underneath in order to continue reading the content, and this will undoubtedly encourage some readers to click on these ads. This technique does not  violate Goolge’s terms and policy.

Have a look at this site: QuickSprout.  Can you see my link there?

It took me about 20 minutes. This is how I did it: When I first got on to this site, I noticed it’s got a PR5, and its “Top Commentators” list give out Dofollow links to commentators site (If you don’t know what dollow means yet, please see my previous post), and to my surprise that I only need to make 5 comments to jump into the list.

After made 6 comments in 20 minutes, my link jumped into 4th place of the list. I actually spent most of the time reading the posts there. It is a very good blog with a lot of fresh ideas. A link on this blog is certainly worth your effort, and you don’t need too much work to achieve this.

That’s the beauty of comment back linking. It’s free, and it’s one way linking. Use this method, I’ve got 1 link on a PR6 blog, 2 links on PR5 blogs, and 2 links on PR4 blogs and 1 link on a PR3 blog(with 31k+ subscribed users).

While my Technorati rank improved from over 1.5 mil a couple of week ago to around 500k at the time of writing, I can’t wait to see where my PR will land at during the next round of Google update.

Install my Make Money Online toolbar to find out all the blogs with my fresh free one way back links.

(P.S. Please leave meaningful comments only, as it is heavily moderated. Also please let me know if you knock me out of the list, so I can do some catch up.)