Make Money from a Mini Website – Part 5

November 19, 2009 By 2 Comments

Go to Part 4

Choosing a Domain Name and a Web Host

In this part, I look at the process of selecting a domain name and a web host for your Mini Website.

When you choose a domain name for your Mini Website choose a name that will match your keyword phrase. In our example we chose the keywords “Home Carpet Cleaning”, therefore, we should go with the domain “HomeCarpetCleaning.com”. If the .com version is already registered try a name with hyphens, for example, “Home-Carpet-Cleaning.com”. If the hyphened version of the domain name is not available, try another TLD such as .net or .org. If the .net and .org TLDs are taken as well, then you may need to consider a domain name with a prefix or a suffix. For example, “GoodHomeCarpetCleaning.com” or “HomeCarpetCleaningTips.com”.

Make sure that your keywords “Home Carpet Cleaning” stay together. It is very important that your keywords should be present in the right order in your domain name. For example, the domain name “CleaningCarpetHome.com” will not do you any good. Google tends to favour websites that have the search keywords present in the domain name in the right sequence.

Once you have chosen your domain name, you need to find a hosting service to host your website. I use HostGator for my web hosting needs and I am very happy with the level of service provided by HostGator. Make sure the Hosting Company provides the CPanel software preinstalled for your account. Using CPanel you can easily install a WordPress blog. Once you have bought your web hosting package, you can install WordPress on your blog. For more information on installing WordPress on your blog read this article.

The reason I recommend WordPress as the platform for your website is because there are number of Google AdSense optimized WordPress themes that you can readily use for your Mini Website. By using WordPress as the software platform for your website, you can concentrate on creating the content for your Mini Website, instead of worrying about how to design and code a website. My favourite Google AdSense optimized WordPress theme is ProSense. This theme is very well designed and the theme developer has given a lot of thought to the placement of Google Ads. I have seen really good improvement in my AdSense Click Through Rates after moving to the ProSense theme.

In part 6, we’ll look at the process of creating actual content for your Mini Website.

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How to write a blog post in under 30 minutes

November 5, 2009 By Leave a Comment

stop_watch

Under “30 minutes”? Yes! That was not a typo and you can really write a blog post in under 30 minutes! If you are like me with a 9-to-5 day job it is really hard to find time to write a blog post, especially with all the family commitments. So in this post I give you 6 bullet proof ways to create a blog post in under 30 minutes without compromising on the quality of your blog. Ofcourse these posts will be not very lengthy. These posts will have an average word count of around 250 words.

Please note that you have to write more detailed posts on a regular basis. There is no excuse for not writing detailed posts. But these mini posts can keep your blog running when you are busy with other activities. So, let us look into how we can create these posts without compromising the quality of your content. The idea is to spend less time on researching a topic and write about things that you already know or experienced.

1. Turn a reader question into a post

If you receive a question from a reader and you know the answer for her question, it is always a good idea to create a blog post to answer her question. If you only emailed the reader, you might spend 15 minutes of your time writing an email for a single person. But when you write it as a blog post, all readers of your blog will also benefit from that post. Since you already know the answer to the reader’s question you are not spending time on researching the topic.

2. Write about your success

If you had success with any initiatives share them with your readers. Everyone is eager to know how you broke the barriers and succeeded in a project. When you share your secrets your readers will love you!

3. Write about what you learned from failures

If you terribly failed in something, share the lessons that you learned from that experience. Your readers would not want to make the same mistakes. They would love to know how to avoid those pitfalls.

4. Revisit a old post and write up a follow up post

Dig up a old post that you have written in the past and write a follow-up post. Add more content to what you wrote before.

5. Write about your opinion or observation

Write about your observations and thoughts relating to your niche. Blogs are about being personal. Write how you feel about an issue. What is your position on that issue and what are your justifications.

6. Write a series

Writing a series is  a great way to write a lengthy article in smaller chunks. By writing an article as a series you can make people to visit your site more often because they are eager to know what is coming next.

I hope you’ll find these tips useful. Have your say in the comments section.

Photo Credit: Leo Reynolds’ photostream

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: ,

3 Easy Ways to Attract Twitter Traffic Using Lists

November 3, 2009 By Leave a Comment

A quick post on how you can use the new Twitter List feature to attract followers and get popular on Twitter!

1. Create a content rich list

Create a list that a person in your niche would love following. For example, if you are into Logo Design, create a list called “100 Top Logo Designers”. The trick is to add yourself to this list as well! Now you have done the hard work, people who are into graphic design would love to follow this list. When they follow this list they get your tweets as well!

2. Categorize all of your following into lists

Don’t leave your followings uncategorized. Categorize all of your followings into different lists. When people notice that you have listed them, they might want to follow you back!

3. Give meaningful list names and make people feel good

When creating a list, give it a meaningful and eye catching name, for example, “Amazing Graphic Designers”. People feel special when they find that they have been categorized into a list called “Amazing Graphic Designers”. This means they will promote your list because it is better PR for them, as a result you get more exposure on Twitter!

Do you have tips on using Twitter Lists? Please Leave a Comment

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33 Proven Methods to Bring More Visitors to your Blog. Guaranteed!

November 1, 2009 By 5 Comments

increase_website_visitors

The success of your blog depends on how well you are able to attract targeted traffic. In this article I present 33 proven methods to bring more visitors to your blog. After reading this article, you will know how to get more visitors than the number of penguins in the above penguin colony :) . If you found this article useful please Re-Tweet on Twitter. Thank You!

#1 Google Analytics, Get it Installed!

Before you start trying any of the methods mentioned in this post, it is important that you get Google Analytics installed on your blog. By using Google Analytics you can measure your progress as you bring more and more visitors to your blog using the methods below.

#2 Create Link Baits

Content that is written with the primary objective of attracting back links is know as a link bait. There are various techniques that you can use to create a link bait. For more information on link baiting techniques read the post titled 9 Link Bait & Content Hook Strategies. Links baits will improve the page rank of your blog. An increased page rank means you will get more traffic via organic searches.

#3 Reduce Bounce Rate

The bounce rate of your website will tell you what percentage of users left your site from the entrance or landing page. Lets say you have a 10,000 visitors per month and your bounce rate is 60%. This means 6,000 visitors leave your website from the landing page without exploring any other pages. That is disappointing! Only 4000 visitors decided to explore more pages in your blog. By reducing the bounce rate you can get more visitors who will spend more time reading your blog. For tips on reducing bounce rate please read the post titled How to Reduce Bounce Rate.

#4 Get a Keyword Rich Domain Name

A keyword rich domain name can bring you substantial traffic from search engines. Google always tends to favor websites with domain names that have the keywords matching the search phrase. For information on choosing a good domain name you can read the post 18 Tips for choosing a good Domain Name.

#5 Give Away Something for Free

Create ebooks, WordPress themes, Wodrpress plug-ins etc. and give them away at no charge. For example, you can hire a developer to create a cool WordPress theme and give it free. Giving away free stuff always bring more visitors to your blog. If you are not convinced with the Power of Giving, you should certainly read this article that appeared on Problogger:  How I got 12,000 Pageviews for $50.

#6 Hold a Contest and Reward Your Readers

Contests are always popular and they can drive a lot of traffic to your website. Recently, Lax at TechZoomIn decided to host an ongoing contest where the Top 5 commentators will get paid $100 in cash each month! His post titled Comment and WIN $100 Hot Cash Every Month attracted 167 responses! I am not sure whether this is the best way to attract comments. But surely the contest did attract a lot of visitors to Lax’s blog!

#7 Customize the 404 Page

The 404 error page is displayed whenever a user comes to your website via an external link and the resource pointed by the link is missing in your website. Majority of the users who come to a dead end 404 page will return back to the site they came from. By customizing the 404 page with a user friendly message will encourage the user to check other resources in your blog. An example of such a message would be “Sorry, the information that you are looking for might have moved to another location. But hang on, you might find the following other articles useful”. Maki at DoshDosh.com wrote an article on customizing the 404 page: Blogging Tip – Customize your 404 Error Page.

#8 Comment on Blogs

By leavening valuable and insightful comments on blogs you build a good reputation among fellow bloggers and commentators. From my personal experience I have seen leaving small and brief comments do not bring much referrer traffic. But when you add larger and descriptive comments that really add value to a blog post, you will find many people cared to visit your website after reading the comment.

#9 Be the FIRST to Comment

The first comment on very popular blog posts will attract a large number of visitors. If you are not still convinced you should read post by Marko Saric at howtomakemyblog.com: How one blog comment can bring you 230+ unique visitors.

#10 Comment on Dofollow Blogs

Dofollow blogs are blogs that do not use the NOFOLLOW attribute for comment links. By commenting on these blogs you can get some link love. For more information on Dofollow blogs and link love, read the post Commenting smart on dofollow blogs.

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Twitter Introduces New List Feature!

October 29, 2009 By 1 Comment

Today, when I logged onto Twitter, I saw the following message on my home page.

twitter-list-feature

The Twitter List feature allows you to group your followers into different lists. So that you can easily keep track of Tweets within each group. For example, you may create a list for family members, a list for professional bloggers who you follow and a list for your friends.

To create a list, you simply click the button “Create a new list” and the following dialog will appear:

new-list

In the above dialog you can specify the name of the list and set it’s security privilege. A public list can be accessed by others while a private list is for your own purpose.

Once you have created the list, you can add friends to it.

adding-to-list

When you click on following or followers, you will see a new list icon that allows you to add the person to a list. In this case I am adding @2emc to my list named “Test”.

Once you have created your list, it will appear under the home section.

home-list

In the above figure you can see that I have created 2 lists. One called “Test” and other called “ProfessionalBloggers”.

When you click on the list name, you will be taken to the list home page where you can see the tweets from people who belong to that list.

list-home-page

The listed label (see below – displayed beside following and followers) shows the number of lists that contain your profile. In addition you can also see which lists are following you and which lists you follow (see below).

list-following

This post provided an introduction to the Twitter List feature. I’ll write my thoughts on lists in another post.

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Google AdSense – No Dollars for Clicks!

October 27, 2009 By 2 Comments

A reader of this blog, who uses Google AdSense to monetize his blog, emailed me the following question:

I’ve had 3 clicks and yet zero dollars. Is that normal? My IT guy tells me that Google takes a while to evaluate things before allocating money but I just want to confirm.

Here’s my answer to this question.

There are 2 reasons why you may have a zero dollar value against your clicks.

(1). Google thinks the clicks are invalid.

If you happen to click you own ads or if someone clicked from a computer on a Local Area Network (example at work) where you have logged in to check your AdSense revenue, then Google will consider the click invalid. The reader also mentioned that he did not click his own ads. This leads us to the second reason.

(2). CPC vs CPM

The AdSense program has two types of ads. CPC ads that are paid on a per click basis (thus the name Cost Per Click) and CPM adds that are paid based on 1000 page impressions. CPM stands for Cost Per Millie. Millie is the Latin word for thousand. For CPM ads the publisher is paid each time the ad is displayed on a page. This means when a user clicks on a CPM ad there is no payment made to you, even though Google reports that click. There are CPM ads that are priced at very low rates, for example 50 cents for 1000 page impressions. This means when an ad is displayed on a page you earn 50/1000 = .05 cents. Google does not report any earnings under 1 cent. Google will keep track of these earning and will display them once the accumulated earnings reaches a cent.

Therefore it is perfectly normal to have Clicks and no dollars against the click.

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Make Money from a Mini Website – Part 4

October 23, 2009 By 2 Comments

Go to Part 3

Calculating the Income Potential of Your Keyword Phrase

In this part, we will look at how to calculate the income potential of the keywords that we chose in part 3. In part 3, we chose to optimize our Mini Website for the phrase “Home Carpet Cleaning”. So let us do some number crunching to find out how much money we can make from our Mini Website.

The average search volume of the phrase “Home Carpet Cleaning” is 14,800 searches per month. With proper SEO and link building you can rank your Mini Website on the number 1 position in Google for this phrase.

If your website appears in the number 1 position in Google you can expect around 56% of searchers will click on your link in the Google search results. How did I arrive at the magic number of 56%. Well, this is based on a study by Cornell University that used eye tracking technology to find what percentage of users will click on the first position of Google results. It is interesting to note only 13% and 9% of users clicked on the 2nd and 3rd position of Google results.

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Following, the most neglected aspect of Twitter!

October 21, 2009 By 7 Comments

If you are on Twitter the most common question that your friends ask is probably “How many followers do you have?”. Everyone seems to be obsessed with this number. In order to create a large number of followers, most of us Auto Follow anyone who follows us. While Auto Following has its own merits, following a large number of users will reduce the quality of your incoming Twitter feed.

Imagine only following the people you are really interested in! How great it would be to follow the top 100 bloggers in your niche. Having fewer followings mean you will pay more attention to your feed. This gives you a better opportunity to interact and mingle with the people you follow. When people notice that you are in conversation with high profile users, they think high of you as well, and they want to follow you too!

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Make Money from a Mini Website – Part 3

October 20, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Go to Part 2

Choosing a Niche

The first step in creating a Mini Website is to choose a niche. When it comes to choosing a niche for a Mini Website, your passion is NOT the most important thing. You have to find a niche that is profitable and one in which you have reasonable knowledge. You can find the profitability of a niche by doing some basic keyword research using the Google AdWords Tool.

Let’s assume that you have some basic knowledge about Carpet Cleaning and you want to create a Mini Website on this niche. So let’s examine this niche to see whether it’s a profitable one.

The Estimated Average CPC and Advertiser Competition columns in the AdWords Tool will give you a general idea on the profitability of a niche. For example, the keywords “Carpet Cleaning” have 100% Advertiser Competition and the Estimated Average CPC is around $6. The global monthly volume for this nice is around a million searches! Everyone wants to keep their carpets clean so it is no wonder that this niche is popular. But this does not mean you pick the keywords “carpet cleaning” and build a SEO optimized Mini Website around these keywords. In this next section we’ll look at how to pick the right keywords for this niche.

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101 Best Taglines Competition, Submit Yours & Get A FREE LINK!

October 18, 2009 By 4 Comments

taglines

Hi There! This is Aaron from TechThinker.

I am running a little competition where you can submit the Tagline of your blog. I am a big fan of Taglines because they can be used as an elevator pitch for your blog. A good tagline can describe your blog’s purpose to a new reader in 30 seconds or less!

To take part in this competition you have to submit your blog’s tagline in the comments section. The readers of this blog (including you) will vote their choices. Once we have reached 101 tagline submissions, I will pick the 20 best taglines (based on the votes). I will also pick 10 of my favorites.

All 30 taglines will be published in this post with a link to your website. This is my way of rewarding you and thanking you for your efforts.

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