Advertising Networks

A popular way of earning money from your site traffic is to sign up with an ad-serving network. The most popular and probably easiest to use is Google AdSense. What’s that then? Put simply, it’s a flexible and hassle-free way to earn online revenue. Website owners display Google sponsored ads on their site. You choose where ads appear; preferably making use of the ton of advice out there that shows you the optimum positions for maximum click-through rate (the amount of time people click on an ad). The way that ads look in terms of font, color and size can be customized to match the look and feel of your site, so you can make them as subtle or as obvious as you like. Ads are targeted so that they will be relevant to the content of your site. For example, if you write a parenting blog and have written a post about your child’s fascination with all things Lego, you’re likely to see ads from toy shops or online suppliers of Lego toys. The theory behind it being that if people are interesting in reading your post, they’ll most likely be interested in clicking on one of the ads to find out even more about the product. Once your visitor has clicked through to a merchant, it’s up to them to make a sale. You, on the other hand, will have already been paid when they made that all-important click.

Affiliate Products

Another way of driving some income from a website is to join an affiliate program and promote products of interest to your visitors. Most website and blog owners focus on a particular topic. It can be a niche topic or one covering a broader angle; it really doesn’t matter. If you have decent content but no product to sell, the solution is simple – sell someone else’s product. Using our parenting blog and Lego post example, you might write about a particular play set your child has enjoyed. Talk about it favorably and then show your readers where to buy it with a link to a store selling that particular play set. There are loads of affiliate programs out there, but perhaps one of the best known is Amazon Associates. By promoting products sold on Amazon, you could enjoy a commission on every single sale that originates from your website. The Associates program is one of the better affiliate programs and offers loads of tools and neat-looking widgets to help you convert your traffic into sales. You can even set up your own Associates store to promote a wide range of relevant products at once.

Engage With Your Visitors

It’s worth spending some time looking at the importance of engaging with your visitors. If you build a nice site with some decent traffic, then at some point you’re going to get visitors. A half-decent SEO strategy with the help of some nice juicy keywords should ensure at least a little traffic comes your way. The key is to keep them coming back for more and offer them things outside of the realms of your website. Get your visitors involved and invested in your site and at some point you’re going to reap the benefits of that interaction. A simple way to start the process of getting to know your visitors a little better is to simply ask them for their email address. Pop a form on your website to collect their details and you’re on your way to creating your own email list. Encourage participation by using what is known as a call to action. This could be as simple as offering your visitors a free eBook when they subscribe to your newsletter. Of course, you’ll then need to write a newsletter each week. This needn’t be overly time-consuming; a quick round up of the posts from that week will do it. This has the added benefit of bringing traffic back to your site and ultimately offers a greater chance of them buying a product through an affiliate link or clicking on one of your sponsored ads.

There is a world of opportunity to make money as a website owner. It needn’t cost anything bar a little time and effort.

Related posts:

1. Business Plan for Your Website
2. Get Tooled Up – Market Your Website for Free
3. Website Design – Writing Excellent Content

For some it may rely strongly on a social approach on others a business to business approach and for others a mix of both. Over the coming weeks I will post some common sense tips on how to improve your sites ranking and show I have done this openly even for this site. Join me soon to read more on this topic.

What the posts will reveal is that there isn’t a secret to SEO at all it is a combination of knowledge on the topic, being well researched and working really hard with a trackable plan.

Content, HTML and Architecture

From the very beginning of your site you have to look at the content of the site and just not blindly pump out pages with bland, uninteresting content that people aren’t looking for. It is all very well that you enjoy wiring for your site but if from a very basic level the content is not on peoples search in Google, Bing and Yahoo then you might as well write nothing. Yes nothing.

The Google Keywords Tool provides an easy to use tool to allow you start some beginning keyword analysis for your business niche and gain traction from a content writing perspective.

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He was very convincing and in fact the product he is selling is interesting and unique to the Irish market. When he paused for breath I said I didn’t want to meet him this week and thought he should write the content himself.  I was happy to go off and get the website design started but I really wanted him to get into the habit of writing his own content and not rely on me.

There was a short uncomfortable  pause which I filled by saying he had a CMS and he could write all this content himself right now and we could shape and mould this in advance of his soft launch in a few weeks.

I sensed a bit of discomfort at his end of the phone  and I  explained that there was no magic wand for getting his message on to a website. He just needed to sit down and type.  I told him it would be hard at the start but all he needed to do was develop the habit of writing a little every day.

When I am writing content I close all other windows put on some nice music and distractions open the editor (usually in WordPress) and start pecking away at the keyboard.  If you are passionate about your business then this should not be a problem.

But We Need To Meet?

I have no problem meeting people to discuss their project and website design plans. But let me let you into a little secret. My job isn’t to be passionate about your product. I will work on the design and development and deliver the message but you are the person who has the passion about it.  I mean I have created a website the Irish Lactation Consultancy Association.  But I don’t care about lactation or the sky above it.  They write their own content and they are happy with that approach.

If you can’t write 3-400 passionate words on your business then I think you might be already in trouble. The website designer isn’t going to do this for you. I have writing skills but I am not going to overnight develop the product knowledge and the energy to write 7-800 words on your business. I will end up referring back to you anyway.  However I bet I could become and expert on your business area and what is happening for the purposes of writing website content pretty quickly by doing solid research and using the many tools out there for developing content.

But I Can’t Write Very Well!

If you can’t write very well then record it and get a content writer to write it for you. Hire a writing professional,  get someone with excellent writing skills to create the content. But in the first instance at least try and create it yourself. Business websites do not win Pulitzer for their flowery language. Simple is good, complex scares people away. If you are still reluctant to do this then use the people above. But I bet you can create at least content that shows you care.

Magic Wand Inc.

Magic Wand Inc doesn’t exist when it comes to creating content.  If you develop the discipline of wiring you can create a rich and useful book of work on your topic.  The fictional graph above is based somewhat on my recent post on how prolific some of the professional bloggers are.  Now the content isn’t the be all and all of your site and internet marketing strategy but without content you are missing a leg on the table.

Search and Keywords

As a regular reader of SEOMOZ their recent blog post  on keywords should be  mentioned in this post.  Keywords and content are a critical part of the pie in search and if you want to be found it makes sense to have content and keywords that people search for with the right mix of keywords and also good articles.  For instance this article is focused on writing content  for your website and how best to approach it.

It isn’t about magic wands as these are for magicians and that isn’t my business.

With Thanks to SEOMOZ

I could write many thousands of articles on how to write excellent content but in reality there are really only a few simple rules.

1. Write Often:  Writing every day is really hard.  But it is a habit and you can develop it and it will yield benefits.
2. Write Well – make sure your spelling is good and your sentences readable.  I make tons of spelling mistakes but a bit of proof reading does show up your errors.
3. Make it Visually Appealing.  Use good graphics and images to show your message.  I took the graphics and presentations in this post from other sources and they were freely available.
4. Write for your Customer.  Think of what the person landing on your page is looking for and write with this in mind,  Ask your customers!
5. Research Your Topics.  Research is everything.  The Internet has tons of information out there and you should use it well.
6. Keep On Trying to Get Better.  Get feedback from people who care and work on improving your writing.  Revisit old articles and make them better.
7. Go Back to Step 1

What do you think?

Update:  One week later despite much prompting he hasn’t written a word of content.  Nor does he want to hire a writer.  It will magically appear for him.

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Often while watching TV during weekend nights I am ,video flicking idly through web pages, social media and online news sites.  With a typical laptop experience I enjoy rich graphics and colour but when using a mobile device my demands different.  I have a smaller screen but I still want an enjoyable experience.  As the device is at my fingertips I also want a light yet rewarding experience online.

Speed of Delivery

Speed of delivery for me is critical.  At night time my kids are often using the Internet as well and more often than not streaming video and games so I want my content quickly and light.  I don’t really want that big image or the flash slide show.  Give me clean typography and crisp text.  I actually want that from my desktop browser as well but I get more finicky when on a smaller screen.  If I am on the move and restricted to 3G or even worse Edge the limited number of HTTP requests can really drag my transfer speed down.

Mobile Theme

Give me the mobile theme.  I really appreciate getting presented the mobile theme and not the full up theme.  I want clearer navigation and crisper menus when on the move.  Get me the message quickly.

If there is an image that contributes to the message then by all means deliver it but deliver it fast!.  People that are using mobile devices are content junkies.  If you can get us good graphics and video at the same speed please do so but not at the expense of speed.

Are You Losing Customers?

Don’t lose valuable customers.  Look around you on the streets and bars and the Smartphone is dominating the market now.  People really don’t use these for calls,  they use them for a host of things and getting online is top of that list.  If you want a ‘lite’ experience and want these people to read your information then think of this  mobile user.  We are an impatient lot.  Much more than the desktop user who can Alt-Tab to another window while your site is loading.

WordPress Mobile Theming

As I thought about this article I realised that I didn’t even have a mobile theme for this blog.  So how long di it take me to remedy the situation?  30 seconds.  I downloaded the WPTouch mobile plugin and installed it in a few seconds and then went to my iPhone to see what it looked like.  And it did exactly what I wanted.  Nice crisp presentation of the blog posts and the date that they were written.  Exactly what a mobile user who was blog hunting would want.  You can do similar work with one of the many free themes that are available for WordPress users.

Detecting Mobile Devices

There are many ways of detecting mobile devices so that when they do come to a static HTML site they get directed to the mobile device.  The above plugin has the code inbuilt to the php and does it transparently which is nice.  However your site may not always be WordPress and need a different design approach and in some cases even a separate site.  However if you don’t have the budget or time for this then the best thing to do is focus on a number of devices and create specific code to recognise the incoming device.

You can then adjust to accommodate  the  screen size to reflect the device.  Use the right CSS can make the mobile browsing experience that bit easier.  Your visitors will thank you

Other Options

Of course you can also get more imaginative and take more time by having a mobile sub domain and a separate site to reflect this or serve different templates (which the plugin above does) or as we are seeing more and more adpopt a more fluid layout.  Fluid is possibly going be what is going to domiante the market as mobile becomes the first device of choice.

Planning Your Site - Flexible Design and Responsive Layout

If you are thinking mobile from day one in your design then your first stop checklist should think of items like CSS choice, and Scaleable Vector Graphics (SVG).  SVG is the new kid on the block and is now a W3C standard that when used well can help you deliver graphics without compromising speed and proportions of images.  It takes a bigger investment in design but if your user community is a mobile one then the payback will be worth it.

Both flexible layout and responsive design deliver the experience irrespective of the design or the actual screen being displayed.  It takes a thoughtful approach and is just not changing fonts but deciding on what the delivery experience is.

Sadly Interent Explorer seems the least responsive on many counts here so again there is the added challenge for the designer to be conscious of the myriad of browser versions that are out there and the risk (or more correctly fact) that depending on the end use, browser and display size your client base will be seeing different content in different orientations and screen sizes.

So Confusing – Where to Begin

Realistically without a significant investment of time (read money) it is difficult to deliver the perfect experience to everybody but some market research of your customer base can help decide where to focus and deliver the best experience there.  Ultimately the mobile market will haea larger and larger piece of the pie so you need to be conscious of this and keep apace with the hcanges.

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Well if you have a contact page and actually are getting contacted then you are at a minimum collecting email addresses.  You should tell people what you are doing with their data.  Some people may worry about what you  with this information.  People hate spam and they don’t want to be getting more crap offer email from you pushing some special offer.

Your WordPress blog privacy policy isn’t meant to be a legal document but if you were to ever use their email address and got a complaint from someone at least you could point to this and say it was there.

I recommend saying in your auto response when someone does contact you what you plan to do with their data  or at least point to a link where they can read some more.

For ecommerce a more rigorous document is needed as you are then handling personal information and even if it is invisible to you you should at least specify this in terms that the layman would understand.

If you are confused then write the words We will not do anything with your data is a good start!.  Then build on this and get a more comprehensive statement over time.  It needn’t come together in one fell swoop and ask others to review it and look at what other sites do and get some ideas.  Jot down a few lines and put the link on your website’s footer.  People may not read it but when they see it they will at least know you were thinking about it and have some responsibility.

But I May Want to Do Something with Their Data!

Well if this is your plan then again state this up front and in your privacy policy.  Also give them an option to opt out.  People will opt out and now you should make the option to Opt In the default so that it isn’t pre-ticked on the form that they use to put in their detail.  It is devious to have a book ticked with an opt in.

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If you look at some of the bloggers who are making a lot of money from online only (or at least claiming to) it is tempting to think that it would be as easy for you to get online and make money.

What we don’t recognise is that these guys (and gals) work very hard have a lot of  knowledge about a niche and literally are typing till their fingers bleed getting content out.

I decided to look at the early days of blogging in a few popular  sites to see what level of output they had on their blogs.  My rough estimates from looking at their archives are below.  But first the blogs I chose.

CHRIS BROGAN - www.chrisbrogan.com

Chris Brogan

I like Chris Brogan’s site and I read it fairly  regularly and  he is a well known online personality.  He blogs about quite a wide number of topics mostly in the self / business improvement space (he may correct me but that’s what I read).

He started off as a writer for the Entrepreneur magazine and then branched out with chrisbrogan.com in 2004.    However like any site he had to start off somewhere so if you look at his early content statistics you can see a consistent pattern.

Chris’ first article was written in 2004 and in the first 4 weeks he wrote as per the table below.  He initially was writing about fitness and not specifically about goal setting unlike where he is today but he was writing every day and a huge total in month 4.  My numbers are estimated from trawling though his archives and manually counting.

In August Chris wrote 60 posts – yes 60 so that is 2 per day every day.  

Problogger - www.problogger.net

Problogger is a hugely popular blog and in the initial days of September 2006 he was writing about 2-3 articles per day and he seemed from month  3 to be writing 3 per day for an estimated total of 90 per month.  This seems to have continued since and as  his niche is showing people how to write good content.

He ranks number one worldwide for this search term. So for the past 5 years he has been pumping out content every single day on the topic.

The one similarity is that he and Chris above take breaks by using guest bloggers so when they are on holiday they are still filling the content silo with content.

Think you cant do it?  Read some of their stuff.  It isn’t rocket science,  all the posts are written in simple attractive language.  none of the pieces are wildly long.  The prose is readable and digestible and doesn’t dig into any one topic too deeply.  This is possible for most topics and niches and they are making money from it.

This isn’t Darren’s only blog or writing output so basically he is writing all the time.  He should be easy to spot as the guy with big fingers.

Mashable - www.mashable.com

Top of the class is Pete Cashmore who is one of the Webs success stories.  He explained this when he was over for beers the other night (only joking!).

Pete started as a tech blogger and the blog is one to the top web and tech  blogs in the world.  He has editorial staff, they are sponsored and his site is one of the go to sites for mainstream technical updates.

These days Mashable are producing articles nearly every hour as it is full time online magazine with many editors, but in the early months of July 2005 in Scotland Pete Cashmore was writing the content himself and skipping July and August where his content was low he continued with about 1.5-2 articles per day for the first six months.

Pete still writes for Mashable but only about 20 or so this year.  This probably the typical output of some people on what they think is an active blog.

 THE STATISTICS

The numbers below are estimates from looking at the archives of the respective blogs in their early days.  They all tell the same story.  high levels of consistent production.  The numbers may be off but they are close enough.

Overall Commentary

The winner in volume here is Problogger but Mashable is now the most popular.  My own perception is that from the beginning Mashable was linking to other sites and had a more attractive topic base.  I am not sure what sparked the great growth of later years but throughout his time writing himself he was writing about breaking products and technological topics which have a huge audience.  He also seemed to jump on reporting a new technology of product  really quickly.

The other guys weren’t (and still aren’t really) writing about specific items and developments so their challenge was  different.  Across the three of them there is evidence of hard core attention to their writing.  What we cannot see from these numbers is the other work they wre doing offline to build community but the effort must have been intensive  and still is in the case of Problogger and Chris Brogan .

Hard Work

Your typical private sector work is usually contracted to be in the office for 8 hours a day.  Of those 8 they have lunch, coffee breaks,  leaning on the wall chatting breaks, meetings (where they do not contribute) and from that I would estimate they do about 3-4 hours work per day.  Think I am joking do a log of your own days work and let me know.  You will be surprised.  Don’t share it with your boss by the way.

Bloggers and content creators buck this trend.  Even if it is a part time gig they are putting in 8-10 hours work per day working on their content, networking, social media and basically living the plan.  They produce mountains of content in the early stages of their work with rich keywords for search and well written content to retain the visitors.

They don’t stop for coffee.  If they work another job they work till 2-3AM on the content and get up early on weekends to do the same.  They still have family life but they use every available minute pushing a message again and again and again.  They don’t give up in a day or a week.

Intent

Unlike most of the bloggers who come and disappear these guys only have one intent to come online (despite what they may claim).  it is to make money and as much of it as possible.  If the content is great then they will get and retain visitors  that eventually will click though on some of the ads on their sites.

They aren’t here to write fluffy life diaries.  They are to get cash from you.  If they do it by writing top notch content that attracts traffic then all the better.  In fact without this content they would not succeed as you can spend a lot of money getting traffic but you have to retain the person for at least a period of time for them to eyeball the ad and make a decision to buy or not to buy.

This isn’t a secret.  They will tell you this.

Where Do I Start?

Simple answer – don’t unless you can dedicate several weeks and months to a regime that involves single minded attention.  Laser like attention is what I mean.

Build a rich unique interesting set of content.  I would say 2-300 posts in the first two months on the topics at 2 posts per day.  Each of them should be excellently written, grammatically tight and entertaining.  They need not all be huge treatises on the topic but should for a measure be at least 500 to 1500 words in length.  the number of words isn’t an influencer.

Good luck!

The Author writes occasionally and not enough and has no subscribers.  He lives in a lonely cave on top of a mountain and this blog post was delivered by snail mail and typed in by a typist.

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A contact page on your site is particularly useful  for people who may not have an email account. Many people do not have an email account and they may not be regular users of the Internet. This may be only one of their few interactions with the Internet during a year so a simple contact form and clear contact details will make their user experience all the easier when they come to your site

WordPress has a huge variety of plugins plug and play contact forms that can be tailored to meet your needs and you can have several different contact forms on your site depending on the the type of page and information that you are looking for.

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I do not think I will be able to sustain it but it has sharpened several lapsed social media  involvements I had in some minor blogs,  Flickr and YouTube. I have some other ideas that I need to purseue mainly triggered by this game.

Even my photo taking has changed as I normally do not take a lot of photos but with my involvement with Empire Avenue I now have revisited Flickr, purchased a Pro account and dusted off my camera in anticipation of catching up on some fun photographs. I have a Fujifilm FinePix F100fd that I rarely use but it is now in my pocket and I plan to get out there and take some shots over the coming days as Autumn arrives. If you want to sign up click here and check out my ticker at http://www.empireavenue.com/grangeweb

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Picture from Twicepic

Editors Note:  After this was tweeted I took my own advice and made adjustments to this post by adding some more content, improving the content and embedding a YouTube video for people to see one of the people I enjoy listening to speak about goals.

It is important that for your website that you have a business plan for it.  this may sound a bit silly when you read this first but if there is to be a point to having a website  then you should document some achievable goals for over time as you meet them you can adjust them.   You can’t sit back and let the site just sit there.  There are literally thousands of website being created every hour worldwide for bloggers, businesses and just for fun.

Even though I do not have exact data for Ireland you can be sure that there are enterprising people working day and night to make their online business work. 

Just having a good or even excellent product isn’t enough.

• Increase number of subscribers to your RSS feed of your blog.  Don’t have a blog?  Get one.
• X New social media followers through the site alone.  You can use a URL shortener to see who is coming from the site.
• X number of comments on your blog per day, week and month.
• Increase visibility on certain pages on the site.  These could be your products, blog post(s) or a topic close to your heart.
• Update content on main site X times pre week to either add, update or delete.
• X Number of blog posts per week on a topic or topics that you want to educate people on.

I would jot these down somewhere and post them where you can see them if you don’t reach them like any business goals you should modify them  If you don’t think your website should have goals then I think you should rethink.

Often your goal may be that people learn about your products.  The why not have a goal that a certain product page gets increased visibility over the next month.  Measure visibility as visits, hits, comments.

There reason people don’t have these plans is they don’t want to work and thing that if they leave the site there it will happen by magic.

Believe me it doesn’t – lets listen to one of my favourite speakers Brian Tracy on the topic.

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