"THERE are two kinds of knowledge. One is general, the other is specialized. General knowledge, no matter how great in quantity or variety it may be, is of but little use in the accumulation of money."
Web Blogs are online diaries made up of short frequently updated posts. In addition, they are inexplicably popular.
Steve Pavlina's Blog, dedicated to helping you make conscious decisions in your personal development and courageously follow through on them is a good example of a very popular Blog. In February 2005, this site received about 86,000 visitors, in January 2006 about 715,000, and today Steve's Blog receives over 1 million page views each month and is ranked by Technorati as one of the Top 500 Blogs in the world.
It is listed in nearly every search engine because of spider food. New content is added almost every single day. We will discuss that later.
One key advantage of Blogs is that they are easy to update. The other side is that surfers will expect you to update your site very frequently. If you do not they will go somewhere else.
When you sign up for a Blog or create one on your own site use part of the name or a similar name to the name of the sponsor program you are promoting unless it is against the sponsors T.O.S.
This blog, Marketing-Tipps.blogspot.com, showed up in the Search Engines in 3 days. It is not even in the top 10 for most search engine terms yet it consistently produces income, mostly AdSense.
But when you create your Blog or Blogs it is really important that you pick a niche that you know and understand. Ask yourself: Would and does my Blog appeal to me? Is there something about it that excites me?
If not, you need to go back to the drawing board.
When you create your Blog, let us say about "mp3 players", and its posts use the galleries and Urls from your sponsors. If they come with a description, use them. If you have a choice between short or long descriptions use the long ones. This is your spider food.
However, do not add them all to the Blog at one time. Add them 7 to 10 at a time. Set you up a schedule. Every second or third day add more. If your sponsor does not have a lot of galleries to use you're going to have to use several sponsors for each of your Blogs to keep them updated on a regular basis. After 10-15 days when the first posts are buried well out of site repeat them. You are after surfers coming from Search Engines and you are laying down spider food. It is a lot like fishing. You are putting out bait both for the surfer and for the spiders or bots from the Search Engines
Moreover, it is very important that you think about Spider Food. Use descriptions for each of your content with your Blogs name in them. If for example you are promoting Asian content, use many related names in the entries you make on your Blog. This is very important.
Go to Google and type in for example "mp3 players"
Write down all the related key words you find on your notepad and as you make entries in your Blog weave these words into your entries. Over the next few weeks, when you do entries work these keywords into your posts. Repeat them. Yes, repeat them. Repeat them and often. When the search engine surfer comes to your Blog looking for an mp3 player he is not going to set there for the most part and read your posts. He is going to go for the links that lead to mp3 player. Therefore, what you really need to keep in your mind is getting him there.
The quality of Search Engine Traffic is high. Although at first you will not get a large quantity of traffic from Search Engines the traffic the quality of the traffic you do get is very high.
When you get your Blog up on the web, there are three places you need to submit it to. The two major search engines Google, Yahoo, and BLOGGERNITY.COM, which is a Blog Directory. Hand Submit your Blog to these three places. Once BLOGGERNITY listed your Blog, go there and vote for yourself. Sign up there for a free account and write a review of your Blog. It does not have to be anything fancy. Just write how you want the surfer to feel about and see your Blog.
Networking!
Make a list of the other Blogs at BLOGGERNITY and contact the owners of those sites (as many as you can). Write them a short email and ask them to do a link exchange with you. Most of them will.
It is very important that you use careful strategy and monitoring in promoting your blog. Use the referrers' script so that you will know what is going on. Keep a paper record of what you are doing.
By now if you have followed the examples I have given, you know how to set up your Blog and how to get traffic to it. If you follow it, you can make money.
Again Steve Pavlina: His Blog, http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/, is making $4,700/month with AdSense solely based on the following ten principles:
1. Create valuable content.
2. Create original content.
3. Create timeless content.
4. Write for human beings first, computers second.
5. Know why you want a high-traffic site.
6. Let your audience see the real you.
7. Write what is true for you, and learn to live with the consequences.
8. Treat your visitors like real human beings.
9. Keep money in its proper place.
10. If you forget the first nine suggestions, just focus on genuinely helping people, and the rest will take care of itself.
This business model is fascinating. I obviously did not invent it, but I am certainly enjoying the ride. It is incredibly simple, much simpler than running any other business is. The risk is virtually zilch, and there is no overhead aside from web hosting (assuming you already own a computer and have internet access). There is no selling, no products, no customers, no order processing, no fraud, no inventory, no shipping, and no deadlines. And yet you earn income 24/7.