www.diyara.com

Those of you who have been reading my site JoelComm.com (and that’s all of you, right?) will know that my mom has just started blogging. I’m so proud of her. You can see her blog at www.travelswithsheila.com, and most importantly you can see how she’s optimized her ads.

That’s a great case study for anyone wondering where to put their ads on their blog. They’re beautifully optimized and they’re already bringing in money.

Now, my mom has never been much of a tech-head. She’s only now thinking of buying a laptop. But what’s impressed me is how fast she got up and earning with a blog.

I think that sometimes those of us who have been building sites and uploading content for years forget how frightening dealing with servers and finding domains can be for newbies.

Blogging is the ultimate solution. You can have your own blog in minutes and plugging in the ads is an absolute breeze. Heck, Blogger practically throw the ads at you.

The only possible concern with blogs is how you can get the maximum income from them. Once you’ve got the ads blended and positioned, all that’s left to do is play with is content. You’ve really got two choices here. You can either keep writing about the things that interest you and hope that those topics are interesting enough to interest lots of other people. Or you can focus your writing on products to bring up targeted ads with expensive keywords.

I think that the best strategy is to do both at the same time.

The reason that people read blogs is that they feel they have a relationship with the person behind the page. They like them. They trust them. And they’re interested in what they have to say. Create a blog that’s focused solely on bringing up high-earning ads, and you’ll get those ads. But you won’t have anyone to click on them.

Create a blog that interests you and others and use it to mention topics that are going to bring up good ads and you’ll get the best of both worlds. Again, my mom’s blog is a great example of this. When she writes about her travels, she creates some great stories that are really fun to read. But she also might mention the equipment she uses when she’s hiking down a mountain or skiing down a slope. That provides good information for her readers and good ads that pay for her blog.

Know which products you can work into your blog?

Joel Comm is The Internet Revenue Expert. Online for over 20 years, Joel teaches people how to make money in the digital age. The recognized authority on Google AdSense, Joel teaches how to multiply your AdSense income at The AdSense Code. To ask Joel Comm a question about making money online, visit http://www.AskJoelComm.comYou can read his mother’s blog at http://www.travelswithsheila.com

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One of the quickest and easiest ways to try your hand at running a web site is to set up a blog. Once you’re up and blogging, you can sign up with Google AdSense and start selling ad space. Bear in mind that starting a blog isn’t going to bring you instant revenue. You’ll have to put some energy into promoting the blog, getting it listed in the search engines, and of course writing quality content that people will actually want to read.

There are plenty of free blogging sites out there to get you started. My favorite is Blogger.com. Signup is extremely simple, and you can be blogging in a matter of minutes. See my blog here: http://workfromhomespot.blogspot.com. Blogger has plenty of nice templates for you to choose from, and they’re all customizable should you wish to tweak them. Blogger also gives you a nice blogspot.com subdomain address for your blog, which looks better and may help search engines find you.

When setting up your blog, you want to pick a topic that you know something about. This will make it more interesting for you, and will make it easier to keep the content fresh. It’s pretty much universally agreed that search engines prefer sites with lots of content. And if you want visitors to find your site, you have to get listed with the big search engines. You should also try to pick a topic that will generate some expensive advertising. Blogging about baby penguins is all well and good, but it’s not a highly competitive market as far as advertising goes. Do some research on the Google AdWords site to find some hot topics. Tech topics are generally good sources of high paying ads, but there are others.

One thing to note about choosing a topic is that Google doesn’t allow AdSense ads to be displayed on sites with content that they deem to be objectionable. Hate sites, sites with illegal content, and so forth will not be accepted, so just keep that in mind. Read the Terms of Service on the AdSense site if you have any doubt.

Once you have your topic, start writing like mad. Try to use lots of keywords relevant to your topic. This will help your ranking with the search engines, and will also make sure the right ads show up when you get to that stage. Don’t take this to the extreme, however. You’re writing for humans, not search spiders. Even if you have great keywords, if your content isn’t vaguely interesting, you’ll find no one spends any time at your site.

After you have several pages of content, you can sign up for a Google AdSense account. Just go to www.google.com/adsense, and click the button to sign up. You’ll have to give them some information about yourself, and about your website. A human from Google will review your site within a day or two, and you’ll get an e-mail telling you whether you’ve been accepted. If you’re not accepted, they’ll tell you why, and you can resubmit as soon as the problem is corrected.

When you’re accepted, log in to your AdSense account and create some ads. They’ve got a very simple form to do this, and you just copy and past the javascript code they generate for you. At first you may see only public service or very generic ads on your site. After a day or two, if you have enough quality content on the page, you’ll start seeing more relevant ads show up.

You’re now a webmaster! You didn’t have to buy a domain, pay for hosting, or even know much about web design. My next article will deal with how to promote your blog (or any web site), and build traffic to it. Check back soon!

© 2005 Gary LaRock
www.workfromhomespot.com

About the author
Gary LaRock runs http://www.workfromhomespot.com, your source for information and ideas about working from home. He lives in Thornton, CO, with his wife and son, where he has worked exclusively out of his home since 2003. Work From Home.

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Even though I’ve had several personal blogs for years, I’ve only been officially business blogging since 2003. So in going back over expenses for the last quarter, you can imagine my shock when I realized that my overall business costs were down about 19%. What saved me so much money? Surprisingly, blogging.

How can you save money with your blog? It’s pretty simple, so I’ll be brief.

Attract search engine traffic without paying the big bucks

If you want Google, Yahoo and MSN to pay attention to you, blog.

It doesn’t have to be a whole new site, just add a directory to your existing site and start blogging. Most blog software solutions are either cheap or free.

And you can find out most basic blog information online for free (really, sometimes just typing your question into Google will do it.) by people who’ve actually done it. For less than $100, you can build a small library of blog tips and secrets, written by successful business bloggers.

Instead of buying links, get one-way links from blog search engines and directories, as well as getting your RSS feed content displayed at other sites.

Linking is a great way to get search engine attention and click traffic. Some people get links by trading; others by including their links at the end of freely distributed articles. Others pay to be listed, or to get linked.

In each of these scenarios, some type of trade takes place, money, free content, or a link back.

When you blog, you’ll find plenty of search engines and directories that are willing to list you free of charge. For the most part you won’t need to link back - you’ll get a one-way link from site favored by search engines, often using text that you select yourself.

If 90 or more of these free, legitimate links back to your site is worth your time, then get you blog in motion.

Not only that, if you update frequently, other sites may want to display your RSS feed content on their sites. To encourage them to do so, put a link on your page with instructions on how to do so. Ever since I put one on the front of my site, various feeds from my main site have turned up in the most unexpected places.

Cheaper way to study your audience.

As your blog gets more popular, you may start to find that on any given day, you have a representative cross-section of prospects and clients at your site. If you have a question for them, you can just… ask.

True, you can post a link to a survey in your newsletter or on your site, but these are not as interactive as the ability for your audience to comment. They will comment, and you can reply to ask them to expand, or clarify. Conversation gets going and before you know it, a bond is formed, a much stronger bond than occurs in a one-way conversation.

Cheaper (and faster) way to start a resource or authority site.

Five years ago, if you wanted to start an authority site, your best bet was to build a portal with a specialized directory at its core. Three years ago, you were better off starting a forum with a resource section attached to it. Last year, your top bet was a feed-enabled content management system, especially as more parts of content management systems began to have content feeds related to them. (I have 12 feeds for each of my PHP-Nuke based sites, though they don’t work as well with Google Tap.)

Now, if you want to be the expert, you want to start a blog.

If you’re blogging consistently, you have a hub of information collected that will inspire return traffic. You have a collection of links to articles, sites, and tools. You can constantly write up your own opinion editorials on each of these items, as well as fact-based analysis of news and events that can help your audience make better choices.

As blog software matures you can now categorize, and alphabetize your links, and with the ability to ping multiple sources as well as leave trackback links to other sites, you can send your readers through a ring of related, freshly updated information that ultimately leads back to you.

Spend less money on advertising as your blog becomes more popular

I can’t promise you that you’ll never spend another red cent on advertising costs. However, the amount of free advertising you get from having your blog link or RSS feed listed in dozens of search engines and directories, and popping up in feed readers is not to be underestimated.

You’ll probably still want to do some ezine advertising when your new ebook or software release is debuted. But you may not need to buy as much advertising or purchase as often.

Then there is the fact that many newsletters that are also published to RSS feeds have wider reach. I’ve found that it’s worth the extra money to appear in both versions - ask your favorite publisher for details. For publications that allow this, it’s normally only 20% extra

Save money by retaining visitors

You’ve probably heard a thousand times that it is easier to sell repeatedly to an existing client than it is to find a new one. So how do you get that visitor to come back, and possibly buy again?

A constant stream of new information on a particular topic work is enough to keep people buying a daily newspaper, subscribing to a magazine or viewing a television series.

Frequent updates can work the same way for your site.

With bloggers being named People of the Year by Time magazine last year, if you’re not blogging in 2005, you’re going to be left in the dust by other sites in your industry that do. It doesn’t have to take up a lot of extra time, and the time it does takes is made up for in the money you can save.

Read more about how a blog can help you get spidered by search engines within 24 hours at http://www.freetraffictip.com/gbc .

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