Blogging Made Easy In Just Three Simple Steps
Blogging is a really great way to reach an audience, share your thoughts, even help you with your Internet marketing. I’ve been blogging for nearly 3 years and continue to enjoy the benefits of not only communicating with an audience, but engaging in meaningful dialog. Starting a blog is easy to do and pays huge dividends.
There are a number of free services available that offer free blog services. Sites like Blogger and WordPress only require a brief registration and set up. Once you determine a theme for your blog and a template, you’re ready to begin posting. Posts are entries you make on your blog that are published instantly.
Some bloggers post comments to their blog each and every day, others once a week. Regardless of how frequently you post to your blog, content can be focused on a specific theme or random topics. The most popular blogs focus on a specific niche and provide valuable information, content, and commentary that encourage interaction with blog followers.
Sign up for a blog service. Begin development of your blog by signing up for Blogger or WordPress. Once you have an account, you can quickly set up your blog. Consider the goal of your blog and what type of commitment you are willing to make. Start small and be consistent.
Determine how you will monetize your blog. If you want to use your blog to generate revenue, there are a few techniques you can apply depending on which platform you’re using. One of the most popular methods of monetizing your blog is with the help of Google Adsense. This is a popular option and very easy to add to your blog. Not only does it generate a small amount of revenue for you on a weekly basis, but it also provides relevant links based on your posts.
Another great way to monetize your blog is through paid links. The concept of offering paid links is pretty straight forward. You create a section of you blog that lists recommended sites. In this list, you only place links that people have paid you to post. There are some tools you can use to automate this process. I simply add a link to a post that says, “How to post your link” with directions and a pass through to a Paypal page. You can set up a single time payment or subscription, allowing would be advertisers the opportunity to purchase a link on your blog monthly or for a longer period of time.
Many individuals are monetizing their blogs by using pay per post or other blogging network. Essentially, advertisers search for bloggers who are willing to write a post to promote their product and services or brand. You can sign up for one of these networks quite easily and be contacted when advertisers feel that your blog would be ideal for distributing a message. You write a blog post and get paid for doing so.
One thing to keep in mind is that the success of you blog is based on a number of factors. I believe that having a targeted blog that offers original content is ideal. You will build a large following. This is essential because most of the monetization methods are based on having enough traffic to make your blog appealing to advertisers as well as blog readers.
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FTC Online Privacy Guidelines Faulted – BusinessWeek
FTC Backs Web-Ad Self-Regulation Wall Street Journal
New York Times - San Francisco Chronicle - BBC News - Register
all 137 news articles
Stimulus deal could mean $26 billion for California – Los Angeles Times
Reuters - Washington Post - USA Today
all 15,078 news articles
Israel to quit Gaza as Hamas joins truce – Business Day South Africa
GAZA CITY — Israel began pulling troops out of the Gaza Strip yesterday as a fragile unilateral cease-fire came into effect after its deadliest offensive yet on the battered Palestinian territory. As medics scrambled to pull dozens of bodies from the mountains of rubble left by Israel’s three
Steelers Top Ravens for AFC Title, Super Bowl Next – ABC News
Tough and mean, like the original Steel Curtain. Pittsburgh Steelers safety Troy Polamalu (43) crosses the goal line on a 40-yard interception return Pittsburgh Steelers safety Troy Polamalu (43) crosses the goal line on a 40-yard interception return for a touchdown in the fourth quarter of the
Obamas, Bidens enjoy Lincoln Memorial concert – Orange Leader
WASHINGTON (AP) — Under the gaze of Abraham Lincoln’s statue, Bruce Springsteen and a red-robed gospel choir kicked off a spirited preinaugural concert Sunday before tens of thousands on the National Mall. The crowd erupted in cheers when Obama and his wife, Michelle, arrived, walking down the
Super Bowl ads toned down this year – Biloxi Sun Herald
The Super Bowl is on track to remain one big, glitzy bash even in these tough economic times. That’s not to say some advertisers aren’t nervous about buying expensive ad slots as business falters. Some stalwarts such as General Motors Corp., FedEx Corp. and Garmin Ltd. won’t be advertising on
Adsense Earnings Fluctuating!
Traffic just went down immediately after the O—-l—-ympics. With that my
adsense earnings also went down. However the past 2 days I was able to recover and made very good
money from adsense. The CPM was higher the past 2 days. But today, I am so shocked by the earnings that I have made from adsense. The
money just went really down. It’s just the beginning of the day though but the difference is quite noticeable. The CPM or cost per impression just went really low. Could I be smart priced? Or could this be because of my failure to update some of my blogs.
For this particular blog alone, I noticed the most low CPM which was not the case before. This blog has high CPM for the ads. So yes, I have this theory that the O–l–ympic ads are causing this. The event just ended so advertisers are expecting low traffic and thus are bidding low for the keywords. So basically, my move now is to eliminate the said ads and incorporate high paying keywords in my posts so that I can make more money with adsense. More money because I badly need it, especially now that I have lots of financial obligations and my financial standing can’t suffice for all. Well, everyone needs money nowadays. 
As Social Media Grows, Effective E-mail Thrives
Over the past two years, the rapid adoption of social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace has transformed the way many consumers interact on the Web.
Some customer segments, especially younger ones, now spend an increasingly large percentage of their online time on these sites and primarily use them to communicate with their peers. These same consumers, according to a recent report from JupiterResearch, are apparently spending less time in their e-mail inbox and may be paying less attention to the messages they receive there. This shift is causing some to question, perhaps prematurely, the future of e-mail as the dominant social networking tool.
In his report, The Social and Portable Inbox, David Daniels quantifies this shift in alarming detail and, according to Jupiter, it may not be isolated to younger segments. Nearly one-quarter of e-mail users reported using social networking sites in this way. Fifty-three percent of respondents age 18 to 24 reported doing so, and 42% of those 25 to 34 also reported using social sites instead of e-mail for personal communications. The reason for doing so was consistent across segments: Too much irrelevant messaging in the e-mail inbox.
I believe that e-mail marketers who ignore social media, especially those that target younger audiences, may be missing a real opportunity. As it turns out, the social sites are excellent places to share information with friends, family, customers and prospects — the trick is to communicate with them openly, honestly and in a human voice. If relevance is the key to e-mail marketing, authenticity is the key to marketing in social media. Social initiatives that leverage messaging interpreted by audiences as fake or overly promotional will never get off the ground and, worse, may negatively impact brand equity. Marketers who are able to add value to the conv
ersations within the social sites and who can forge honest, genuine communication streams that empower users to interact with a brand on their terms, however, will be well positioned to benefit from the social shift.
Is e-mail dead? Far from it. The future of e-mail looks quite bright. Daniels acknowledges that e-mail specifically remains the primary reason that consumers connect to the Internet. For many customer segments, e-mail is still the social networking vehicle of choice, and it shows few signs of abating. Publishers who deliver highly relevant communications through the e-mail inbox increasingly command premium CPMs from advertisers who realize excellent returns from their investments. The recent sale of Daily Candy to Comcast for a whopping $125 million is just one of a myriad of signs that e-mail is alive and well. The social networks are helping to foster new conversations online, for sure, and I believe they can be extended and enhanced through e-mail – a ton of transactional e-mail messaging is already coming from the social networks in the form of updates and such things.
Consumers haven’t given up on e-mail; they’ve just given up on bad, irrelevant e-mail. So, while launching engaging, authentic social media messaging programs is an excellent idea for many online marketers, the other near-term imperative is to allocate the resources required to drive truly relevant, timely email messaging based on data intelligence. Incorporating demographics, click-stream data, e-mail response history and other behavioral factors are good places to start.
The era of batch and blast is officially over. With the conversation spilling out of the inbox, it’s no longer good enough.
Nicholas Einstein is director of strategic and analytic services at Datran Media.
CAN-SPAM Updates You Should Know About
A few months ago, the Federal Trade Commission approved a new rule provision under the CAN-SPAM Act that clarified opt-out and other legal responsibilities for “multiple sender” e-mail messages — those messages that contain advertisements from numerous parties.
Before the ruling, many senders were unclear about what was required in such situations. A strict reading of the law would have it that each entity whose products and services were advertised in an e-mail should pool and process their opt-out files before deployment of every campaign and that each message should contain an unsubscribe link for each and every marketer.
In a nutshell, the FTC’s new ruling says that it is acceptable for a single marketer to assume full CAN-SPAM responsibility for a message, without the need for an onerous, pre-deployment, multiple-marketer scrub, and a confusing multiple opt-out link process for consumers. As long as one of the marketers assuming compliance responsibility is one of the advertisers in the message, is identified as the sender in the “from” line, and includes a way to opt out from its own list, it is OK for that marketer to be the sole entity responsible for compliance.
The clarification should come as a sigh of relief for the many firms who previously went through the difficult multiple opt-out processes or avoided including third-party ads in their messages altogether. Now, the door has been opened for senders of all sizes to start monetizing their lists to the fullest.
Publishers and editorially focused senders aren’t the only organizations that can benefit from selling ad space in their e-mail newsletters. Retailers can include offers for complementary third-party products. For example, credit card companies can help sell rental cars, hotels and high-speed broadband connections; or automakers can pitch lifestyle magazines. The possibilities are really endless.
But hold no illusions — nothing in the e-mail space comes easy, and there remains significant challenges to maximizing the monetization of e-mail programs. The debate about metrics transparency that has consumed the online advertising world lately is no less relevant to the e-mail space. In an era where advertisers demand total accountability, how could they possibly invest heavily into a channel, such as e-mail, when there’s no guarantee their ads are going to be rendered and viewed? The list they’re buying may be blocked or placed as spam into junk folders. However, hope remains in the form of services that can help e-mail get delivered.
Post provided by Jordan Cohen, senior director of industry relations at Goodmail Systems.
Why bad times mean good times for IT
By now I’m sure you’ve heard the news about the federal government bailing out the financial markets. OY. But while it’s making headlines, what’s happening now in the economy is contained within the mortgage banking and real estate industries. Infotech has, so far, defied the current trend.
Forrester, however, projects that 2009 IT budgets are about to get whacked. But I think Forrester still can’t see the forest for the trees. The economic problems extend only so far as they impact the ability of non-RE (real estate) and non-banking businesses to borrow.
With the exception of the dot-com era, which was all about IT and an IT investment bubble, infotech typically weathers downturns. That’s because investment in software, hardware, data centers, security, application development, etc., fuels increased efficiency and business competitiveness. In other words, sound investments in the IT infrastructure can, typically, save money and boost revenue.
Also, remember this aspect of IT: People gotta’ upgrade. They will need larger disk space, more memory, better graphics, higher bandwidth, apps that better align to their business workflow and strategy, etc. Management and users alike need and want more mobile e-mail, more Blackberrys, more mobile line-of-business apps, more wireless access, etc.
To cut operational costs and reduce capital investments, many companies will ditch locally hosted e-mail and apps and go with managed services and SaaS instead. Same with VoIP, video conferencing over IP, unified communications, etc.
Instead of high capital outlays for servers, software, and network infrastructure (not to mention payroll costs for the care and feeding of that aspect of the data center and help desk), they have a low monthly operational expense — and, often, just one neck to choke.
Likewise, companies will consolidate data centers using virtualization, blade technology, and more modern 6-core CPUs in an effort to cut energy costs and save on rent (by reducing the data center’s square footage). ROI trumps again. And don’t forget the “forced upgrades” that IT vendors can often push on their base (anyone for VB.Net?).
Then there’s security and, by extension, privacy. Companies MUST invest to harden their systems when holes are discovered or to comply with new legislation that comes down the pike. And for pure Web plays, when the economy tanks, Internet advertising becomes an even more cost-effective, and thus attractive, option for advertisers over television, radio, and print.
Moreover, with consumers and businesses pinching pennies, e-commerce services will certainly enjoy greater traffic as people shop for bargains online. E-commerce players will have to ensure their data centers are up to snuff, while brick+mortar retailers that are not online will be under intense pressure to go there.
And here’s an interesting question to ponder: what was one of the principal reasons why the big investment banks started dabbling in risky subprime mortgage instruments? Because Internet investment services ate their core business: trading. Now anyone can trade online, without paying or using a human broker. Who needs Lehman Brothers when there’s E-Trade?
Just some counter points to the projection/perception that a down economy means bad times ahead for IT. My guess is that IT marches on and even sees some impressive gains as companies cut back in other areas, and turn to IT to achieve increased efficiencies.
For more on the topic, here’s some timely supporting views:
Meet Alpha Software’s newest (and cutest) Alpha Dog
About a month ago, Richard told you about the loss of my beloved dog, Hurley. Actually, dog doesn’t even begin to describe what Hurley was to me. You can read more about him on my blog.
After living in a home so filled with love and personality, suddenly every room was breathtakingly empty. So my boyfriend and I decided the best way to begin moving past our grieving for Hurley would be to provide a good home to another dog in need. And that’s when we found Rooney.
Rooney and his brothers and sisters were found with their mom on the side of the road in Georgia. He had been shuffled around a bit in the weeks since then, and he finally found a permanent home with us.
At 3 1/2 months, he is bursting with personality and energy — the perfect match for all the guys and gals at Alpha Software. Now, he’s officially the newest Alpha dog.
Every so often I’ll let you know how he’s doing, and share some Rooney stories as we make our way through the puppy years. So be sure to come back for more. How could you resist that face?
Make Your Search Campaign Successful
Search marketing is a great way to generate revenue and grow your business. However, many marketers fail at search and don’t know it. The basic performance reports available from providers like Google can lead an advertiser to believe that his or her campaign is generating plenty of qualified interest, when the truth might be precisely the opposite.
Clicks, click-through rate and cost-per-click are the measuring sticks of most search campaigns, because they’re the statistics most easily gleaned from online reports. Judging a campaign’s performance by these standards is not only misleading, it can cause an advertiser to waste significant investment.
Why? Because a click is only one action — it doesn’t measure what that prospect did when he or she clicked on your ad (that is, did he or she become a lead or buy your product) or even how qualified he or she is. Our experience tells us there are many advertisers who are content to generate thousands of clicks at considerable cost, but discover on further analysis that the vast majority of those clicks are completely worthless.
The perfect search campaign is one that:
■ generates a cost per acquisition (CPA) — whether your acquisition is a lead, download, registration or sale — competitive with other advertising vehicles
■ generates predictable CPA results at projected spend levels
■ is sufficiently expansive to cover every keyword or phase, and every variation that a qualified prospect could search on
■ delivers relevant ad copy for every keyword (to drive clicks) and maps to relevant landing pages (to drive conversions)
■ is designed in such a way that specific terms, groups of terms and campaigns are all optimized separately, with separate budgets, ad copy, geo-targeting and day-parting
■ is tracked through use of a back-end database or CRM system that measures ROI on a keyword-by-keyword basis.
Don’t have all these metrics in place? No one does. The scenario above is the ideal program, and a hypothetical ideal at that. But you should use these standards as goals and benchmarks.
Know what you want to achieve. Are you trying to generate downloads, registrations, page views, sales leads, qualified leads or sales? How are you defining that goal — is someone filling out a registration form, hitting a particular page or meeting certain qualification criteria?
Your search campaign should measure how many of those desired actions are taking place; how much each desired action is costing in the aggregate; and, which keywords generate those actions at the lowest cost.
Howard Sewell is president of Connect Direct.
Your Media Mix Is Essential
Integrated marketing is your key to success. By combining multiple media formats, your message is more powerful and your marketing more effective. In this post Michael Hubbard, CEO of Media Two Interact give us great insight into the power of a diversified media mix.
A well-rounded media mix is essential to any marketing campaign, because no channel alone will have the same results as several channels working together and supporting each other. That is something that most marketers can agree on. But many marketers and
advertisers are steadfast in their belief that search is strictly a direct response vehicle, and display is only a branding tool — black and white, case closed. But that can be extremely limiting. In fact, there is a gray area where display and search blend together and where display actually becomes a driver of search performance with a direct impact on conversions.
Determining the right mix of search and display buys must be determined on a client-by-client basis. Often, as a media buyer or agency, you are faced with a client who wants to raise the search budget because he or she thinks spending more money on search will lead to better search results. The reality is that spending a larger chunk of your budget by buying up all the related keywords may increase clicks, but it is unlikely to have a significant effect on conversions because that big mix of keywords is no more targeted than before.
For instance, if you’re Apple, you’re catering to a very specific segment of online electronics shoppers. Basic keywords like “mp3 player,” “computer,” “processor” or “laptop” may technically apply to the products you carry, but the audience searching for those terms could be looking for something entirely different. If you’re looking for Mac users, not just anyone in the market for a computer, why waste the search dollars?
A better technique is to spend a portion of your marketing budget on the most targeted search keywords and then dedicate a good portion of your budget to display advertising to support the search programs, sending more qualified buyers to the search engines. You do this with demographic/geographic and behaviorally targeted ad buys and more brand-based placements to really ensure you’re reaching the shoppers with the most potential to buy your specific product or service.
After seeing display ads while browsing, users will often go to their favorite engine and search for the brand they saw in the ad. The reason for this may be because people don’t like to click on banner ads as a rule, but once they’ve seen enough ads to establish brand recall, they will go to a channel they’re comfortable with to find it. The point is, there’s nothing to brand on search engines alone; something else is always driving you there, and display is one of those big drivers of traffic.
The great part of multiple media is that the strategy is two-pronged because in addition to supporting search, display has its own ROI objectives, which means double the benefit for you. Search is a powerhouse to be sure, but display can be the wind beneath its wings.
Post by Michael Hubbard, CEO, Media Two Interact
Article Marketing Still Rules!
Article marketing continues to be a proven method for generating traffic to our websites and developing good search placement, even after all of these years. I have been reading articles online since 1995, and I continue to read a few dozen articles per week on subjects that are dear to my heart.
Some Claim That Article Marketing Does Not Work
Some article-marketing critics will admit that they have only distributed only one or two articles. Well yeah, I can see why article marketing did not work for them – because they did not work at making article marketing profitable for them.
Article marketing is like
any other method of advertising. If you don’t make a real investment in it, then you cannot reap great rewards from it.
The Marketing Rule Of Seven
Advertising professionals speak of the ‘Marketing Rule Of Seven’ which suggests that a consumer must see your marketing message at least seven times before they start to pay attention to your message. The pros also suggest that once seven exposures have been achieved, the consumer will make a subtle, subconscious connection to the advertiser. Recognition brings rewards, in that after seven exposures to an advertisement, consumers will start to feel as if they know enough about the advertiser to trust their sales message.
If television, radio and print advertisers understand that a company’s sales message must be seen or heard at least seven times, then why would you – the Internet marketer – think that you can write a single article and see the full benefit of the medium?
Successful Article Marketing Requires A Commitment To The Reader
All commerce on the Internet is driven by information, such as written sales messages and information about products and services. Some websites also benefit from generic information concerning topics that their potential clients will be interested in reading. For example, if a website sells plumbing supplies, the consumer may find the availability of information about how to remove the old fittings and how to install the new plumbing equipment, as an essential element of their purchase decision.
Article marketing when used well can help a company establish itself as an expert in the field, and it can help show a reader why hiring the author’s service might be better than a do-it-yourself project. As an example, with the resume advice article, once the reader sees how comprehensive your knowledge is and how detailed a resume should be, the reader may just decide that using your resume writing service will be much more productive than the do-it-yourself resume.
Your Article Marketing Strategies Influence Your Overall Success
We know that some people tell you that the only reason to write an article is to get a link back to your website. What most of these people don’t tell you is that most websites that accept reprint articles do so, only after a human has reviewed or at least scanned the article.
An article that does not read well will never be published on a top-tier website. Yes, some websites may accept a poorly written article, but more sites will only accept well-written articles.
A reader who is not impressed with your article will seldom reach your resource box, so the link back in the resource box can only give value to your website from the search engines – maybe. The search engines generally only give value to articles on good websites or those placements that have lots of links pointing to the article within the website. Bad articles don’t get published on good websites, and they do not attract links.
As the Marketing Rule Of Seven should indicate, multiple articles generate a long-term wave of new links and potential visitors to your website.
Consistency is also important to a successful article marketing campaign, in that releasing weekly articles will enable your readers to see your marketing message regularly.
Finally, the smart use of a variety of related keyword phrases will strengthen the ability of your article to appeal to the search engines and the people who use them.
If you can balance the needs of your article’s audience against your need for search optimized content, then you can benefit handsomely from your article marketing campaigns.
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ersations within the social sites and who can forge honest, genuine communication streams that empower users to interact with a brand on their terms, however, will be well positioned to benefit from the social shift. 
