Archive for advertising
What you most Certainly Do NOT Know about your fellow Bloggers
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If you’ve dipped so much as a toe into today’s marketing world, you’ve heard about blogs. Actually, if you’ve been on the internet at all lately, you’ve probably seen that blogs are a pretty commonplace occurrence. You probably are not aware of how truly easy it is to advertise on the blogs of bloggers.”
What is this thing called a “blog?” What is it for? When did people across the unverse first hear about it? How can you make it work for you in today’s competitive marketplace, especially when you have very little money to spend on your marketing?
The term “weblog” was coined in 1997 by Jorn Barger, editor of RobotWisdom.com, one of the oldest blogs out there. The shortened term “blog” came about in 1999, offered up by one Peter Merholz, editor and author of Peterme.com, a very well-established blog about his life, the web in general, and about everything else under the sun. By July 2006, statistics show that there were 12 million bloggers in the US alone (we’d venture to say there are many times that amount now), and that more than 39% of the US population reads blogs. Again, chances are that now, with the unemployment rate rising and Internet costs getting less expensive, that number is much higher. From the perspective of someone who wants to advertise on blogs, this is a good sign. Statistics also show that by February of 2009 there were 1.5 billion Internet users worldwide. Read More→
From Citizen Journalist to Blogployment
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The website Technorati, has produced an annual ‘State of the Blogosphere ’ report since 2004 following the growths and trends across the blogging community. The recently released 2009 report confirms that while “more bloggers than ever are making money from blogs” the actual methods by which they do it appear to be as varied as the topics that they blog about.
According to Lijit, between 2008 and 2009 there has been a 68% increase in the number blogs with ad tags installed. This indicates that monetizing blogs is high on the priority list of most publishers. However advertising is only part of the story.
Across the groups who make money from blogging, being a speaker at an industry event or contributing to print media is likely to contribute more to the bottom line than the monthly cheque from Google.
So if highly paid jobs in the “traditional” print media are become scarcer and few bloggers are getting rich on advertising revenues – where’s the money? Read More→
Reviewing A Product For Affiliate Glory
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Once you’ve got some traffic going you may want to start down the affiliate path. Not too many people know how to do this properly as the affiliate world is one cloaked in secrecy and deceit. Some guys try to shove the product down the readers’ throat saying things like ‘Well, in my honest opinion I think this gardening ebook saved my marriage and I couldn’t recommend it more. Without it I would be half the man I am today.’ Some underplay selling the affiliate product by saying ineffective things like ‘You know you could buy this gardening ebook, it’s probably okay, but whatever, I won’t judge you if you don’t.’ Both of these examples are too unbalanced to sell your recommended product to the customer. After all, the customer isn’t stupid.
First off make things easy for yourself by recommending a product because it’s actually good and not just because it will give you lots of money. If you recommend a bad product, you may make money in the short-term, but long-term you’ll get negative posts about it, and you’ll lose the readers’ trust. If you’re in this for a sustainable income, you have to recommend products that you know aren’t complete hack jobs. Read More→
Writing for Advertisers – Blogvertise
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If you’ve ever fallen asleep in front of the TV and woken up, hours later in the wee small hours of the morning, you may well have experienced that low-rent TV advertising mainstay – advertorials.
You know what I mean, some ultra-chirpy, pneumatic woman extolling the virtues of some magic cleaning product or her orange-tanned co-host describing how you can turn 40 years of stomach blubber into ripped abs in just 30 days or your money back.
Now these blatant adverts are thinly disguised as “programming” but nevertheless they seem to work, as can be proven by the amount of closet space taken up by “Abdominizers” or the like.
Now I’m not suggesting you sell your soul and turn your precious blog into one big advert, but there may be a way of getting a few dollars more than Google AdWords will throw at you, by “tuning” some of your articles into more advertiser friendly copy. Read More→
Why ads are like tattoos
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Okay sailor, so you’re getting some regular traffic. Good for you, but watch your step. Some blog people are tempted to blast their page with ads to milk their readers for everything they’ve got. They fling pop-ups, have dancing, clapping monkeys selling gambling membership and random women offering the latest dating site up for a monthly fee. These are not good ideas. In an ideal world the whole page could be one big advert monster that eats into your readers’ wallets, but that is not the case.
Adverts have to be used sparsely on the internet. Readers are already bombarded with marketing and will simply ignore most of it. You have to be different. You have to be elegant. Don’t shove adverts down your viewers’ throats. People come to your blog for the experience. They come for the information. When you start putting adverts up you will start to detract from their experience when they visit your blog. If your content is good enough for them to return to your blog, they will probably allow a few ads, but there comes a point where visiting your blog becomes more annoying because of the ads then it is useful because of the information. Read More→
The ethics of advertising on your blog
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Everyone loves ethics. They are great. Ethics live in old, smelly books that no one reads. So what’s ethics got to do with advertising? Well, some people think that information should be free and that you shouldn’t bombard your readers with manipulative marketing designed by the capitalist pigs to devour your soul.
These people usually don’t wash a lot, but the principle is there- should you advertise on you blog? Are you ’selling out’?If you offer your readers real value then there is nothing wrong with advertising. High quality content takes time and effort to make, and you should be rewarded for your work. The key is making sure that the content is actually offering value. For example a lot of bloggers write reviews of crappy products in the hope of making cash from affiliate links. This may have short-term success, but this will hurt the blogger. It ruins any trust that has been built with the readership. To keep your fans’ trust it’s always a good idea to advertise something that isn’t completely useless.Anything that you do related to your blog, you should be thinking what effect does this have on my blog’s reputation? It’s kind of like branding in the marketing world. Nurture your blog’s image and only post what you know is good content. Banner ads are popular on a lot of successful blogs. You may be surprised that readers don’t really mind these. They are a common feature of the web. Having an ad at the top of your blog and on the right hand side is normal. Read More→
