How to Make Money Sell Services On Your Blog

How to Make Money Sell Services On Your Blog

When it comes to monetizing your blog, there’s a world of opportunities for you. In your own little corner of the internet, you can find very many revenue streams, but the one we will be looking at here is how you can make money selling services on your blog.

Many bloggers initially chase after passive income streams, they discover how unpredictable passive income can be. A spike in sales one month can be followed by a sharp decline in another. While a great way to monetize your blog on autopilot is through passive income, selling services on your blog can help combat the unpredictability of passive income helping you to make consistent sales through out the year.

Why Bloggers Should Sell Services

As a blogger, you might already have an audience who are loyal readers and are ready to purchase anything from you. These could be information products like e-books, courses or a service like a one-one-one coaching session or consultation. You could be missing out if you don’t offer a service like these on your blog. You ought to take advantage of your eager readers who want to work with you directly.

What Services Can You Sell?

The first thing to decide is what services to sell. Logically, coaching sessions or consultations is the way to go. For instance, bloggers who are career professionals may offer one-on-one consultation with other professionals looking to make career changes or financial bloggers can help create a financial plan and help people stick to it.

If you always get emails from your blog readers requesting more words of wisdom concerning their personal issues, you can provide consultations and coaching. Isn’t it sensible to make money selling your advice, rather than giving it away for free?

Keep in mind that readers are already stopping by to get what you have to say about your niche. With one-on-one consultations, your readers can get personalized attention and an opportunity to receive added support they crave.

Services to Sell

1. Blogging as a Service

Experience they say is the best teacher. As a blogger, you have learned the finer points of post writing and brand marketing. You can offer your blogging service to businesses to help them generate brand awareness and expand their online reach. It is wise to turn your blogging knowledge into a service offering on your blog.

2. Virtual Assistant Services

Virtual assistant services are providing increasing success to bloggers now than ever before. It is a great way to make better connections with fellow bloggers as it provides practical insight and knowledge that can help your own blog as well.

3. Social Media Management

Blogging and social media work hand in hand. You probably are already active on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. You must already know one or two things about gaining followers and getting traffic from these social sites. Other businesses would be able to benefit from your real-world social media marketing and management experience if you show them. So, why not package that knowledge into a service for sale?

What To Charge

Having determined a service to sell, it’s time to have it packaged for sale on your blog. However, before you go live with what you are offering, it is wise to figure out what you’ll charge and how many hours you can devote to services each month. Because there’s a lot to cover through the day, you’ll have to be careful not to spread yourself thin. Ensure you are dedicating quality time to your service before offering it for sale!

Conclusion

Whatever your area of expertise may be, you’ll find a service offering that makes sense for your blog. If you are counting on your passive income stream monthly, then you have to put your knowledge to work as a service on your blog.

Keep in mind that you already have an audience stopping by every month looking for your expertise. Do not forget all the practical knowledge you have gained as a working blogger. You can turn these into services that small businesses or other bloggers can get help with if they are stuck on their own initiatives.

Whatever service you choose to sell, always remember that it has to be relevant to your existing audience. Be authentic and make it easy for them to be accessed on your site. In no time, you’ll have a new stream of steady income you can count on every month.

A Beginner’s Guide to Building an Email List

A Beginner’s Guide to Building an Email List

An email list is probably the most important asset you'll ever have in your blog or website business. If you have done any research on online marketing, you would have probably come across comments such "my biggest mistake was not building an email list from the beginning," "most of my income comes from my list", "the money's on the list" and so on.

In this article, you will discover what an email list is, why to build one and how to get started building an email list.

What is an email list?

An email list is a collection of email addresses of people messaging with regards the product or service you are selling.

Why would I want an email list?

Easy. An email list lets you connect directly to those interested in you and what you are offering. They want to know what your product or service is and hear what you have to say.

Is an email list for everyone?

An email list is not for everybody. If your aim for opening a blog or website is just to express yourself, you are not interested in gaining followers and customer, then you will not necessarily be needing an email list.However, if you plan on getting followers or customers, then building an email list is vital and highly recommended.

Is email necessary when there is social media?

There are many reasons why it is important to own your list. You do not own your social media pages. You do not have control over your social media audiences. The social media networks own them, so you are essentially renting them. If those networks pack up today or change their terms, you might be out of business. For example, many people were making a lot of money with MySpace at its peak, until the platform gradually slid into oblivion and along with it, customers and their income. Having spent a lot of time building relationships, curating great content and building a network, it would be unwise to leave it all in someone else’s care.

So how can one get email addresses?

Email addresses can be gathered by buying them but this is probably illegal and spammy. People may go mad and remove themselves from your list if they see your email as spam. So to get people to voluntarily sign up for your email list, provide valuable information that they wouldn’t want to miss, then invite them to drop their email address so they can continue to receive more valuable information directly and never miss out on anything. .

You can offer a freebie or a “lead magnet which could be short but helpful information in a print, a tip sheet, worksheet, images of something else that your subscribers will be happy about. When potential subscribers ask what’s in it for me? Make sure you have an answer ready. Ensure your lead magnet is related to your content going forward or subscribers might become uninterested if the rest of your emails in unrelated.

Now that people have subscribed, what should be put in emails?

There are basically 2 choices which are:

1. Blog Posts: These are mostly sent to your email subscribers to alert them of a new blog post you have made. The model by which it works is a “sell it and forget it” model and you don’t have to add anything to what’s already on your blog and finally,  it’s all free. However, these kind of lists mostly grow stale. It’s like building a garden and having to let it go. They might still produce, but with more attention and care, there can still be some produce.

2. Stand-alone Content: This is different from blog posts. These include newsletters, autoresponders, or broadcast emails. This can be tweaked based on what your readers are responding to and get engaged with. In addition, you have full control of the process of using content. You can also highlight contents or products which you couldn’t have done with blog posts. The main downside to this method is the extra work you have to do to get subscribers to sign up to a different list which can cause confusion and frustration.

How To Manage the Email Addresses you Collect

It is not advisable to build your email list in your regular email client like Gmail, Yahoo or Outlook. There are companies specialized in doing this and they are called Email Service Providers (ESP). Signing with an ESP can help resolve all your email marketing needs. Their system is set up to automate and manage all the processes involved from signup to sending to stat taking and more.

One of the free services for this is FeedBurner. FeedBurner handles most email marketing tasks but FeedBurner is not truly a ESP in the sense that it just collects email addresses to send blog posts and other content to your subscribers. FeedBurner is pretty limited because one-off emails can’t be sent to your list. But on the other hand, there are many ESPs that you can sign up to and won’t charge you till you hit a certain number of subscribers.

How To Make Money with Digital Products on Your Blog

How To Make Money with Digital Products on Your Blog

One of the easiest ways to make money with a blog is through selling digital products. If properly done, you can begin to earn up to six figure income pretty quickly. You will only invest time and effort in creating the blog and digital products. You will not incur manufacturing costs, shipping fee or having to worry about inventory.

The following steps will show you how to go about create digital products and selling through your blog.

1. Develop the mind of a Digital Product Creator

It is important to understand what creating and selling digital products entail from the very beginning or you may never achieve success.

The first thing you need to have is self-confidence. You need to be confident in your knowledge, skill and experience before sharing it out for others to put to use. Then you need trust that people will willing pay for what you have to offer and they certainly will because people want stuff that offer value that free things that contain nothing.

Free information like most free things are not fully valued and thus not taken seriously. But when people pay for it, they naturally value it more and pay attention to it.

So as not to create doubt and be more confident, it would be better yo choose a niche you know very well, then create digital products that meet a certain burning need.

2. Choose Your Niche or Industry

Your niche or industry will determine what to write on and what products you can sell. Not only that, it will also influence the size of your market and audience profile.

Make sure your chosen field is one you are familiar with and curious to learn about. That way you will be offering something you like and know about. Also, the niche has to be a profitable one otherwise it will all be a waste of time and effort. Some great niches include health, relationships, personal finance, self-improvement, making money online, environment and many other ones.

3. Build Your Story

The internet throws up the opportunity for us to be whoever we want to be but in this business, the best advice you would get is to be yourself and stay true to it. Don’t invent a personality that you would not be able to live up to and never base your business on lies because it would ruin your self-confidence and come back to hurt you in the future.

Make your stories honest as possible. People might begin to be skeptical if your story sounds too good to be true or if you don’t want to show your face or share your name. Be proud of yourself and people will be glad to deal with you.

4. Build Relationships

A great part of selling digital products online involves earning the buyer’s trust. As a digital product seller asking for your readers’ money, it is very crucial that they see you trustworthy.

You need to show that you know your game and live up to all your promises. They want to be assured that your digital product will answer their questions and fulfill their expectations. To do this, you will need to post helpful information free on your blog.

5. Build an Email List

There’s power in the list! You can build an email list of readers who by now trust you or engage with your content. Encourage them to sign up for more helpful content or throw in some freebies to get them to sign up. With their emails, you can always keep in touch with them about new products or any new information that you want to share or sell.

6. Spruce Up Your Blog

To start a blog is easy, but to build it to look professional and convincing enough for Google to rank it higher in SERPs and drawing in more traffic and engagement is the hard work.

Posting helpful and original information on your blog consistently would convince readers and Google that you are authentic. Knowing that this is how to get Google, you need to give them what they want which includes using keywords strategically, backlinking, providing readable content and so on.

7. Get Ideas for Your Digital Products

Now that you’ve are selling digital products through your blog. It makes sense to start getting more ideas for the products themselves. If you want your products to sell faster, then they need to answer immediate needs, to help buyers.

You can make a guess or research on the kind of product that can do that and hope your audience will need them and pay for them, or you can just ask your audience  directly what they need.

8. Choose the Digital Products You Wish to Create

Having determined the needs your digital products meet, the next thing is to figure how to answer those needs. You can create any of the following digital products depending on your skills and experience. They include:

1. Ebooks

2. Videos

3. Audio

4. Photos

5. Software

6. Graphics

7. Courses

8. Apps

9. Services

10. Reports

In deciding on any of these, keep in mind that internet users of today are drawn to visuals that anything else. So if you create an ebook, ensure you have lots of photos, graphics and illustrations, but do not overdo it.

Creating and selling digital products can be challenging for the first time. You might think you will fail but truthfully digital products are not that hard to create and sell. If you put in the hard work and dedication, you will soon begin to generate serious money from selling digital products on your blog.

How to Make Money from your Blog with Advertising & Sponsored Content

How to Make Money from your Blog with Advertising & Sponsored Content

Several ways are available to make money from a blog, but nowadays, achieving profitability is getting harder with the blog marketplace continuing to get crowded. Most people are turning away from affiliate marketing because it has been overused and has become boring to prospects to ad feeds and sponsored content which offers better monetization opportunities that can drive profit fast. In this article, we will look at how money can be made on your blog with advertising and sponsored content. Let’s start with advertising.

Advertising

There are three primary types of online advertising that bloggers can use to make money from their blogs. They include:

1. Pay-Per-Click: With this, the blogger is paid by the advertiser any time someone clicks on the advertiser’s ad.

2. Pay-Per-Impression: The blogger is paid by the adviser whenever the ad appears on the blog pages.

3. Pay-Per-Action: The advertiser pays the blogger when someone clicks on the ad and performs further action such as signing up or making a purchase.

These ad types can be used on your blog or website in many different ways.

Some of these are:

Contextual Ads

These ads are basically pay-per-click ads that are delivered based on a blog page content. Theoretically, the ads that appear on the page match up with the content of the page, thus increasing the chance that someone is going to click on them. The biggest example of contextual advertising is Google Adsense advertising.

Text Link Ads

These ads are not based on blog page content but are placed instead on specific text in the blog posts. There are text link brokers offering one such text link advertising service.

Impression-Based Ads

Impression-based ads are ads that pay bloggers based on the number of times an ad appears on their blog. Examples of impression-based advertising providers are FastClick and eXponential.

Affiliate Ads

Bloggers are able to provide links to products and earn based on the ads with affiliate ads. When someone clicks through any of these ads and completes a purchase of the advertised product, the blogger gets paid. Two of the most popular affiliate ads platforms are Amazon Associates and eBay Affiliates.

Direct Ads

Ad spaces are offered to visitors to purchase and when they buy it, they supply the blogger directly with ad content to post to the blog. These ads appear as banner ads or similar display ads on a blog which is uploaded directly to the blog by the blogger. Pricing for direct ads differ from one blogger to another (usually depends on traffic the blog receives). Direct ads are referred to as sponsors ads as well.

Reviews

An indirect form of advertising on blogs is reviews. Bloggers can be contacted by companies and paid to talk about their products, services, or anything else. Some companies use the PayPerPost type of review advertising where the blogger is paid for every post about the company.

Now that we have seen how to make money on your blog through advertising, let us take a look at how to do same through sponsored content.

Sponsored Content

Sponsored content is content that a blogger is paid for by businesses who want to get information about product or service to target readers faster. Several forms of sponsored content are available, which include:

-Reviews (as mentioned earlier).

-Articles by sponsors which are then posted to the blog.

-Links embedded in existing content.

-Giveaways, etc.

Note that sponsored content is not only for articles and written content, some companies pay for social media posts and YouTube Videos covering their products and services like written content do.

Factors that influence how much money you can be paid with sponsored content is size of monthly traffic, target audience reach, social media influence, backlinks and much more. These determines if you earn tens or thousands of dollars. Bloggers with established audiences are often contacted first by potential advertisers, but these advertisers can also be contacted directly by the blogger as well.

How to Make Money On Your Blog with Affiliate Marketing

How To Make Money On Your Blog With Affiliate Marketing

The idea of making money through blogging sounds great right? You invest some time, energy and passion into writing high-quality blog posts and you can earn an income doing this all for free!

One of the ways websites and blog owners use to generate revenue from their blog is through affiliate marketing. If you are not familiar with affiliate marketing, here’s a short run through.

Affiliate marketing involves signing up to an affiliate program (One of the most popular one is Amazon Affiliate), you will then receive special links to promote through your blog and every time someone clicks those links to purchase a product, you will receive a percentage from sales which is called a commission.

If this sounds interesting to you, then keep reading to discover how you can start earning on your blog with affiliate marketing.

Set up your blog and add great content

The first thing to do is set up your blog. To do this is quite easy. You can find an article on that here or go to Google and search with “how to create a blog”. Having done that, you need to invest a couple of months into building great content and media following before proceeding to website monetization.

Find an affiliate program or network

When it comes to partnering with affiliates, you have two main choice. Either you sign up to become an affiliate for an individual company or sign up with an affiliate network. When you sign up with a individual company, you will be promoting that company’s product or services, but when you sign up to an affiliate network, you can become an affiliate for any company that uses that network.

Add affiliate links or banners to your site

Once approved as an affiliate for a particular company or network, you can then create affiliate links for your website. These links can be used in 3 main ways which include to replace current product links with the affiliate links, add more links to content or add affiliate banner ads to your site.

Affiliate programs have an affiliate dashboard where affiliates can grab links to use on their website. Most programs also have affiliate managers who can be contacted should there be any trouble with using links.

Your high traffic pages is another great place to add affiliate links. Look through your analytics to see the most viewed pages, then add a strong call to action on these pages.

Use review posts to promote affiliate products

One great way to drive up interest in your affiliate product is through review posts. Review posts are simply blog posts that explain more about a particular affiliate product, selling the benefits mostly and urging people to try it out. Some examples of these include “review of the best cameras for photographers” or “ review of the best weight loss pills in the market”.

Create an affiliate policy to be trusted

Many people ignore this, yet it is one of the most important aspects of affiliate marketing. It many not be as exciting as the other steps but of you ignore this, you might be setting yourself up for big trouble in the future.

All affiliate marketers are required to disclose all affiliate links according to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). What this means is that if there are affiliate links on your site, you must not deceive your readers about it, but make them aware of this.

An affiliate policy is necessary for your site, as well as disclosing affiliate partnerships on pages with affiliate links. Nothing is more important than gaining the trust of your audience which this guarantees.

Conclusion

With this article, you are sure to have found how to use affiliate marketing to generate money through your blog. Remember, that this is just one way of many to make money with your blog and it’s much better when this one is combines with others.

10 Easy Ways to Improve Your Exit Pages

10 Easy Ways to Improve Your Exit Pages

What are exit pages? These are the pages on your site people see before leaving. The exit page is the last page they see before they go anywhere else online. Of course, you’d wish it was possible for visitors to stay on your site forever, but that’s not possible. However, improving your exit pages could increase your chances.

Is Improving my exit pages necessary?

Improving or optimizing your exit page is very important. By doing this, you are likely to have people staying on your site much longer who won’t click away so quickly.

How can I know what my top exit pages are?

To get to your exit pages, log in to Google Analytics and from your Account Home, click on the right account and find the web property you want to view (usually your domain). In the left column, go to Behavior, then Site Content, then Exit Pages. Your top exit pages will be listed in the main column.

How do I optimize exit pages?

Different pages exist for several reasons. There’s not one particular solution for everything. A good idea is to take a look at top ones to see if there’s anything that can be done to lessen the exit-proneness. To improve them, you can do the following things:

1. Update all outdated content.

2. Fix all errors.

3. Add more internal, relevant links through your posts or page content. You might have written new posts or pages related to this topic after it was published, so you might read through the post to link to newer posts.

4. You can add relevant links to other posts on your site and at the end of the post. This helps people who have made it through the post and to know more to click to read further. There are plugins and services that do this automatically or you can do it manually.

5. Emphasize on your email sign up, especially if you are offering a freebie or lead magnet

6. You can offer a lead magnet unrelated to your newsletter sign up but mostly related to the post or page. This is like a bonus material.

7. If it’s a logical exit page with visitors likely to leave anyway, you might consider including an ad or affiliate link.

8. Assume the role of tour guide by determining what they might likely want to read next or the next step they may want to take, then insert a link to that post.

9. If you have lots of people coming from sites like Pinterest and leaving again, you can add a section at the bottom saying “Did you come here from Pinterest? Here are other posts that Pinterest users love.” and link to those other posts with other sources of traffic. 

10. You can ask your readers to share on social media or encourage visitors verbally to join your other places on the internet.

It is recommended to do all of these things so that you do not overwhelm people with one style only. Put yourself in the reader’s shoe to see things better. Just have an imagination of what kind of person they are and what sort of information they are looking for, then figure out something that you can offer and is of interest. Also, too many call to action is not advisable and can be a reason for many people to click away. So look at your page and think about one thing that you would like people to do when they get to the end. Ensure you make that choice irresistible.

11 Ways to Recycle Your Old Content

11 Ways to Recycle Your Old Content

There are many benefits to be derived from recycling old content like reaching new audiences and making the most of your content writing efforts. Many content made from some months to years ago that were highly popular and performed very well at the time could be repurposed in different formats as you’ll see in this article.

So here are eleven quality ways you can recycle old content for your new audience. There's something for everyone.

1. Webinar to YouTube Video:

Did you host a great webinar in the past with lots of attendees? Understandably, not everyone made it to the webinar but over several months, you've been getting new site visitors and leads who knew nothing about the webinar and what they missed out on. The webinar can be repurposed as a YouTube Video rather than letting it go to waste ensuring that you offer your an asset to your new and old visitors.

2. Recycle Old Blog Posts into Guides:

Consider repackaging several old posts you've made about a specific topic into a fresh new guide. For example, you have curated posts about using hashtags to boost searchability on Instagram, you can take those blog posts and turn them into a "Complete Guide to Instagram Perfection" which can be used for email marketing and lead generation. Having crafted high-quality posts, you don't want them to get lost and be forgotten. You can recycle old blog posts into guides to make them immortal forever.

3. Update Old Content:

Like most things in life, change is constant. How about updating your old posts? Maybe there is a new development or advice you would like to share on a topic you’ve written about in the past. You can take this old post, make slight adjustments and republish as new. Another way to go is to find old posts that have been performing well and generating a ton of traffic, leads or is still ranking highly for certain keywords for your business, do not update these and publish new, instead, update the content of the old post to maintain SEO value and promote again. On some blogging platforms, you can even change the publish date so it shows with a brand new date as if it was a new post.

4. PowerPoint Presentation:

After creating a PowerPoint presentation and delivering a great presentation, you'd like to see it used again. That great presentation with those beautiful complex graphs, amazing animations that can be repurposed into new slide decks. Now you get a new piece of content that didn't require much work putting together.

5. Interviews to ebook:

A popular form of content for blogs is interviews. You can reuse questions you sent to industry experts and put their answers into an expert advice ebook. There's no problem with this as some people prefer ebooks to blog posts because they can easily download the ebook and read later. Not only that, your new expert advice ebook may get new attention from people who missed the interview series before.

6. Visual Content With Pinterest Board

Do you have image heavy blog posts? You can make the most of these blog posts as image posts on Pinterest.

An example on this could be a post based on the best brand logos in a particular industry. You can upload pins of the best brand logos or even create a new board just for brand logos. These pins can be used to drive referral traffic to your website boosting your traffic sources.

7. Quora Q&A

Quora is a great source of content inspiration for many people. It provides users answers from the community to questions on several categories. To use Quora with your old blog post, take that post, look for a question on the topic and provide a detailed answer including links to the blog post proper. Those wanting a thorough answer would be more than glad to follow Quora to your website. Not only that, you also establish yourself as a leader as you engage with community members. 

8. Infographics

We talked about PowerPoint earlier, but do you know those stunning graphs and charts can be repurposed into infographics. Infographics are beautiful, highly informative and easy to read. However, infographics require a fair amount of research and design. It doesn’t have to be a major undertaking though. You can start with a good graph or chart and work it up from there. Just make sure it’s solid because no amount of prettying up can cover a weak content.

9. Statistics with Twitter Posts

Assuming you have created a solid stats post, sharing some coll and interesting facts or data about your industry. You can turn them into individual tweetable elements to get more leverage out of the stats. This can be done in ways like adding a “click to retweet” link to the end of some stats, using most interesting or compelling stats as tweets. Using any of this makes the content much more sharable and to have a better reach.

10. Blog Posts as Tips Newsletter

One beautiful way to recycle old posts is to promote them in weekly tips newsletter. You have already built your own list of email subscribers but they won’t be able to see everything you’ve written especially if your posts drop at a certain time of the day. A friendly tips-oriented newsletter can showcase your weeks’ best blog and provide an extra nudge for your readers to get on your site and read top quality content.

11. Podcasts 

A podcast is an easy way of making use of that limbo time between other productive activities. The idea of starting a podcast might be daunting, maybe because you are not so much of a great speaker. You can get on freelance platforms like Fiverr or Upwork to hire a melodious voice for a few bucks.

A professional voice over artist can read your blog posts out and just like that, you have a podcast. To get the best results, you have to edit the blog post to have a more relaxed and conversational tone.

These tips on recycling old content will ensure you get the most value for all of your content writing efforts. You’ll be able to provide your audience exceptional content in a variety of ways while generating new traffic all through the year.

Tips For Using Images On Your Website

Tips For Using Images On Your Website

Images are the concrete evidence that are used to backup words of text. Images help to make what you write more convincing. Several studies have shown that most people quickly believe a story when there is an accompanying image to the story. An image always leaves a stronger impression because the brain is drawn to objects it relates more with in real life than just words.

Using images on websites is however not as easy as many think it is. Images can mar or make your website. Many people don’t like to use images because they think it contributes little to SEO and eats a lot of space. You will see in this article, why this and other worries are unnecessary if images are used intelligently.

Appropriateness

A good images captures attention and conveys emotions. It can tell a story all on its own. An image can make a webpage really effective not only because of its quality but also because of how it fits into the context of the page. For example, using a black and white image on a website about say web hosting is not suitable but black and white images on an artistic site looks proper.

Technical Issues

Images used on the web today exist in 3 main formats, which are Jpeg, Gif and Png formats. Because we want the image size to be as small as possible, it is therefore imperative that the different formats are noted. For lesser colored images, Gifs are the best while for those with multiple colors, jpegs are more suitable. Moreover, jpeg images can be easily made smaller by compression. Many photo editing softwares nowadays like Adobe Photoshop have a “save for web” feature which compresses jpeg images efficiently. Gifs are effective as transparent overlays. Pngs while having higher quality and transparent overlays, are larger in size.

Aesthetics

Images that are effective have a focus. Except it is go generate a particular effect, fuzzy, vague or blurry images do not look professional. An image should not have too many elements on it at a time since this can distract the viewer from whatever message the image is passing.

There must be a balance of contrast and brightness to make the image stand out better. For example, if a lady in a red dress stands in front of a red painted shop, the lady might not stand out as the colors are too close. Contrast could help separate both colors. If the image you are using is black and white, low contrast makes the image seemed grayed out. The image should not be too dark or too bright.

On certain occasions, special effects can be added intentionally to the image to create a dramatic effect. Softwares have ready made filters and add-on modules that can transform an image at the click of a mouse. An image, button or icon can become more prominent on your site just by the addition of a shadow.

Using special effects is tricky, so it has to be used less frequently as it can take out the life in your image. Many websites that use it too much, have readers focusing more on images than what the text says. While it is a great trick to keep users longer on your website, it is good to use it sensibly. In some case, the image on your website might piss people off too.

Lines of Action

Every image has its own geometry that adds to the look and feel of a webpage. Imagine that every image tells a story. Images are like arrows or sign posts that directs your readers to parts of your page to focus on. For instance, an image of a person looking or gesturing to a certain direction on your website might cause viewers to look towards that direction as well. People see things in orderly geometric horizontal and vertical lines and the lines of action of your images need to be horizontal or vertical to capture their attention. Only if you site is based on design and creativity that this will not mater much.

Layout

How you place images on your website tells a lot to the readers. Dominant and large images tells readers that that is the place to look first and this type of image is actually necessary for every page. For each page, images are to be spread out evenly and placed near to relevant content. Spacing around images must be consistent and like words, everything needs to come together succinctly. Clustering pages with images may produce a negative effect on the readers eyes but running images close together with sufficient spacing and all sharing a common theme will guide the reader’s eyes to read through content clearer.

Conclusion

Images convey much more than web pages of text, and is crucial to passing across a message so readers understand better. However size and format are crucial to site bandwith. Extremely large images take longer to load and are not advised. Page elements can repel attention if used inappropriately, so using images the right away can be the difference between a successful business and a failing one.

How To Write An About Page

How To Write An About Page

 Did you know that the second most popular page on your blog is the "About Page"? The reason for this is obvious. When guests visit your blog and they like what they see, the next thing they'd like to know about is who is the "person" behind it all. They want to connect with an actual human being.

The power of an about page cannot be underestimated as you get the opportunity to explain clearly to readers and prospective clients who you are and what you do.

Having said that, you'll want to keep your about page as short as possible, not some tiresome dissertation that will bore readers. So before we get to the real information on writing an “About Page” here are a few tips to note when writing an About Page.

1. Do not use stock photos.

Many people do not think this to be important when it comes to writing your about page, but using stock photos can turn your prospects off. When it comes to depicting small businesses, stock photos just don't cut it. Most people don't care for your looks. It doesn't matter if you are fat, skinny or somewhere in between, they are just trying to make a connection. Use your real picture because your visitors want to see the "real you" not the slick and polished picture of John Doe.

 2. Avoid all that tiresome industry jargon.

Nothing is more boring than an about page that goes on and on with industry jargons that prospective clients never connect with. Here's an example of an “About Page" paragraph filled with jargons:

"ABC marketing services is the recognized leader in online and offline marketing solutions. We are committed to providing the highest level of marketing expertise by delivering unequaled support, optimum customer service and quality education to our clients."

You must already be getting tired reading that. When visitors come to read this about your small business, they get tired too. They don't care about your high level of expertise or the superior customer support you provide. They simply want to know who you are and if you can solve their problems. So here's another take to that same about page.

"If you are looking to create visibility for your business, generate more leads and earn more money, ABC marketing solutions is always ready to deliver the best results that you need.”

3. Include your contact information.

If you run a small business, then you should add your contact information to make it easy for prospective clients, customers and other businesses to contact you. You don’t necessarily have to give out your phone number. You can use a 1-800 number that redirects to your cell phone. Your email should also be easy to contact you by.

Writing Your About Page

When writing your about page, you need to communicate clearly and exhaustively who you are, what your business offers your customers, when you started your business, location and any other information that is necessary your prospects know about. This will help clients to be more familiar with you.

Some questions to ask when writing your “about page” include:

1. What is your name and the name of your business?

2. What purpose does your business serve?

3. When did the business start?

4. Why did the business start?

5. How many people work for the business?

6. What makes you different from the competition?

7. What are your core values and mission statement?

8. What are the experiences of you and/or the business?

Your about page is a place where you open up and let clients know what your business offers and how your business can help them. The “About Page” can target keywords not used on your home page which can boost your blog website SEO. However, keywords need to inserted sensibly into the about page so that they don’t stick out like a sore thumb. The content needs to be designed for human eyes not the eyes of Google.

How to Choose a Domain Name

How to Choose a Domain Name

Now that you have decided to build a paid blog and are ready to get started, the first thing to do is to pick a niche you are familiar with and won’t mind spending a couple of hours weekly working on. Having done this, the next thing is to get started with setting up the blog and the first step is to get a domain name.

Choosing the right domain name is vital to the success of your blog. If you go wrong with domain name choice, then it can be a bit difficult to switch later without negative effects on your brand or search rankings.

In this article, you will find tips to help you get the best domain name ideas, choose a domain name and register it.

1. Buy a .com domain name

There are very many domain extensions available today with even more coming up. However, from this pool, it is recommended to choose a .com domain name.

While you can come with cool domain names to come up with clever blog names using newer extensions, .com extension is still the most established and credible domain name extension there is. Many users, especially tech-savvy ones will naturally type .com at the end of every domain without even thinking of it.

Moreover, Google is biased towards .com domain names and close ones like .net, or .org domain names. Custom domain names like .info and other custom domain names require a lot more back-linking effort to rank highly in search engines.

2. Use Keywords in Your Domain Name Search

Keywords in a domain are essential. By having keywords in your domain name, search engines are able to tell what your website is about. Domain name keyword along with high-quality content and optimum user experience can help with ranking high in Google.

Finding a good domain with your target keywords is not easy because most domain names are already taken. If you are going to get a domain that incorporates your keywords and stand out, you’ll need to be creative and combine your keywords with other words.

3. Keep Your Domain Name Short

When you are trying to use keywords with your domain name, it is necessary that you keep your domain name short so that it’s memorable.

It is recommended that a domain name should be kept under 15 characters. The longer the domain, the harder it is to remember. Not to mention that users are prone to making typos when typing in longer domain names which can lead to loss of traffic. So it is very important to keep your domain name as short as possible.

4. Make Your Domain Name Easy to Pronounce and Spell

Your domain name should be easy to share when speaking as well as in writing. You want to be able to share your domain name in person. If you plan to use your domain name to create a professional business email address, then it has to be easy to understand and spell for any listener

5. Keep it Unique and Brandable

You’ll need to keep your domain name unique if you want it to stand out in your reader’s minds. When finding a unique, brandable name, it’s good to start your research with other blogs in your niche to see what kind of domain names they are using and model yours along this line.

You don’t want to be accused of using a trademark name or copying another blogger. You can pick a domain name that’s more brandable. Brandable domain names are catchy, unique and easy to remember. For instance, Google.com is more brandable than “searchonline.com.”

Another thing to keep in mind when choosing a unique and brandable name is to avoid names with hyphens. Hyphens can be a sign of spam domains which you don’t want your domain to be seen as. Hyphenated domains are also prone to typos and when users fail to type it in properly, they are likely to end in your competitor’s site.

6. Use Domain Name Generators for Ideas

There are over 500 million domain names that are registered. This means that many people can’t get domains they want because all the good domains are taken. Searching for good domains can be herculean and time consuming, however with one of the domain name generators out there, you get a free tool that can automatically searches for your defined keywords from hundreds of clever domain name ideas.

7. Act Quickly Before Someone Else Takes it

Thousands of domain names are registered daily from all parts of the world. If you  have found a domain name you like, do not wait too long. Domain names are like real estate. There are thousands of people searching for brandable names at cheap rates that can be helpful to their business in the future. If you don’t act fast, someone else can get ahead of you and register your domain name.

18 Helpful Tips for New Bloggers

18 Helpful Tips For New Bloggers

Since the coming of blogging, everyone and their dog has found a voice to put online. It doesn't matter how old people are, what work they do or the gender they are, we all use blogs, be it for personal or business purposes. Blogging has made life much more convenient in many different ways. Blogging offers a lot for those in the online world.

A blog is like your own personal mini website. Large swaths of information can be held on a blog. This can be thoughts, ideas, notes, recipes or an online diary. For many people, a blog is like owning a car. You choose based on color and style and can customize it however you wish. You drive it based on the speed you like. A blog can also be thought of as an unfurnished home. You add widgets, articles and more to make it look attractive and make people to want to stay longer. In essence, a blog can become a part of your life.

When launching a new blog, you will discover it is not an easy task and it requires commitment and responsibility to enjoy doing it. You'll consistently be looking for new information about things to add to your blog. So here are a few tips on things to do and not to do for personal blogging.

1. Do not post pictures or words deemed offensive to your blog. Freedom of speech is great, but it is not absolute. You must respect others because if you don't, you are setting yourself up for failure in blogging.

2. What contents your blog contains are very important. This will determine whether your blog will continue to be visited by people after their first visit. Harsh or offensive words should not be left on your blog. There's nothing wrong with a heated debate on your blog, but challenging everybody leaves a mess that isn't good for you.

3. You have to know your target audience. Don't write off-subject content or they might be disinterested.

Having said all that, some people plan to use their blog for business, so here are some very helpful tips:

4. First of all, keep to the three points listed above.

5. Remember that customer is king, so make high-quality content your first priority. Do not have unpleasant words in your articles as it may offend customers.

6. Use easily understood words and keep your writing simple. Your blog is not the place you want to show how many big words or strange words you know. You don't want your readers looking through the dictionary just to understand what you are saying. The average American reads at an eight-grade level as statistics show. If your information is not passed in the simplest language, you stand the risk of alleniating your audience.

7. Do not assume that the customer knows everything about your business. Write detailed articles that explain all about your business.

Some tips for general blogging:

8. Keep your blog clean and simple. The blogs that are easiest on the eye are simple blogs with traditional colors. The colors you pick should be relative to your blog's subject. A good way to go about this is to take a look at other blogs and websites in your same business or niche to determine the layout of yours.

9. Use clear and visible fonts. The two most popular fonts for blogs are Arial and Times New Roman.

10. Always update your blog. You may not post every day, but you can post at least twice weekly.

11. Always try to rejig your design or it might get stale. You can change your template or color scheme every 6 months.

12. Leave an area where readers can leave feedback. You can also set up a poll to get opinions of readers on topics they would like to see.

13. Always proofread your content before posting them. When readers begin to pick out misspellings and grammatical errors, they might never visit again. Applications like Grammarly are now available to help clean grammatical errors in works of writing.

14. Be clear about your goals for the blog and why you are blogging. Are you blogging for fun or for money? You can write these goals somewhere and always evaluate them to see if what you are doing is getting you closer to them

15. Connect with other bloggers that have the same goals as you along the way. Find out what they are doing and try to replicate it in your own way. But do not clone them. Always, try to find ways to tweak and try things from a unique angle.

16. Blogging is always changing. It’s so different now to what it was in 2004. You must always look ahead to what is new to keep expanding. Find new things to offer your readers. Search actively for things your target audience might be interested in.

17. Use Google to find answers to questions you are too bummed to answer. When you continue to do this, over time you’ll become very good at it, you can then figure out almost anything.

18. Building a successful blog is a long, hard road. Results will not be found overnight. Weeks might go by and all you’ll hear is dead silence. You’ll sometimes wonder if it’s worth it. But, honestly, this is normal. Just keep going. Almost every blogger face this. The successful ones are the ones who persevered and persisted until they started turning in good results.

With these few tips, you should be able to find your way in the whirl-world of blogging. Like everything you master in life, it takes time and practice.

How to Decide What to Blog On

How to Decide What to Blog On

When people start blogging, it is mostly to express themselves, and they do it either from random thoughts, as a way to keep records of their lives or travels, testing their poetry skills, trying out creative writing with short stories or just by putting up new pictures about anything.

Most times, what initially began as some mish-mash of things gradually begins to take shape. With more and more posts made, the blog begins to look more distinct. It becomes a blog that focuses on a particular topic, issue, genre and with a certain kind of tone targeted at a certain kind of audience.

For many people, deciding on exactly what they want to blog on is not very easy. They do not know what their blog topic will be or even what kind of tone or style it would have. Usually, all of this develops just as the blog grows.

You will discover in this article simple guidelines that will help you decide on what to blog on. This article will be a guide on choosing a blog topic, subject, genre or tone.

There are two basic kind of blogs and your blog topic will be determined by any of these two you settle for. These are the personal blog and the non-personal blog.

Personal and Non-Personal Blog

Personal blogs are mostly based on your thoughts, views, poetry, art, videos or anything at all of a personal nature.

Non-personal blogs on the other hand, are based on things that are not personal to you. This includes thoughts and opinions from other people, interests, news, music etc, where you may or may not add your own views to them.

To explain better, let’s take for instance that you started a blog where you write about your experiences while traveling the world. This is a personal blog about you and what happened to you.

But on the contrary, if your blog is based on the latest movies released in Hollywood, then, it is a non-personal blog. Even if you will be expressing your views on these movies, these views are non-personal because you are not the main subject, neither is anything based on your experience or self-expression. You are only commenting on the work of someone else.

Deciding Between Personal and Non-Personal Blog

If you have decided on a personal blog, there are several types that will determine your blog topic. These include your experiences, personal views and any other form of self-expression.

If you decide to settle with experiences for example, blogs on experiences are of many kinds but to keep things simple they mostly include travel experiences, daily experiences, spiritual experiences, relationship experiences, professional experiences and so on.

If you decide to zoom in to travel experiences, then there are several choices such as food and dining experiences, experiences at famous attractions, experiences with the locals, lodging accommodation experiences and so on.

If you decide to narrow this down further, you can finally come to specific topics to blog on such as your experiences in a crowded bus on a trip down an Asian village or your first taste of an Easter African delicacy. You will be writing on these experiences as you help your readers along your own journey.

On the other hand, if you’ve decided to ditch the personal blog idea to settle for a non-personal one, you would go about it in much the same way to eliminate choices and come to one that suits you best. As an example, you could make a choice between celebrity, technology, health, nature, finance, books, product reviews or something else. With the same method we just used on the personal blog, you can use your imagination and common sense to find something that you can blog on.

How to Find Your Passion for Blogging

How to Find Your Passion for Blogging

Have you ever gotten to a point were you felt worn out writing for your blog and implementing all the hard work of marketing? The writing you used to enjoy gradually becomes a chore. You readers are either getting on your nerves or not just encouraging you to church out new content. These tedious little tasks start getting to you.

Blogging, like any business, is like being in a marriage. That initial spark can fizzle out but you don’t want to quit. However, you do want to get some old magic back so you try to put the little extra work in to keep the spark alive.

Here are some ideas to help you rediscover your romance for blogging again

1.  Learn Something New

The human brain never stops wanting to learn, is never able to learn. We don’t just get to a certain age and stop learning. When you get to a certain age and stop learning, your brain starts to die. Learning new things is what made your business so much fun at the beginning-that crazy learning curve. At times, you may have been overwhelmed or intimidated but it was also exciting.

If you must preserve this passion and continue enjoying your business, you have to keep learning. When you stop at what you already know, you’ll begin to get bored and some clever competitor will be waiting to snap at your heels. Learn a new skill to add to what you already have. Dive into topics that scare you. Learn or trying something new will give you a refreshing feeling at the end.

2. Do a Q&A Call

If you have self-doubt problems or are not really offering anything valuable, then consider a free Q&A call with your audience. You can use a teleconference service to announce to your readers that you would like to take their questions and answer them live. This can be done as a blog post or a competition for some free one-on-one consultations. It could be a great way to build up traffic and attention quickly.

You will find you know much more than you give yourself credit for. You might not answer every single question, but let your questioner know that you will look into it- more learning on the way.

This can be exciting and build confidence much more than you know. You feel much important and energized to see how much help you have been and can be to people who read you.

3. Connect

What are your favorite blogs? Visit them again and drop comments on their most recent posts. Remember how you always wanted to create content just as good as theirs. Let them inspire you to try it all over again. Begin to plan for the next live event in your topic. Connect with owners of these blogs as well as readers who leave great comments. Connect with another blogger just about the same level as you. Connect with other persons on Twitter who put a smile on your face.

If you like to be with your self most of the time, schedule a time for solitude to refill the well. Ensure you get a perfect balance between socializing and your “me’ time.

4. Write Your Manifesto

One of the things that would keep you going in the dark days of glut is a manifesto presenting your core values and mission. Grab a paper and outline all the things you want to achieve, who you want to be and don’t want to be. When you have come up with essential values that your business stands for, you will discover they create a feeling of thrill within you. Be plain and don’t bore with platitudes. Let your values put a lump in your throat and make you feel a duty to fulfilling that statement week after week.

5. Find a Coach

Most new-comers in business believe they can do everything alone. We draw our map and follow it to the later. While all that is cool and being self-reliance is bold, you will not be cheating yourself to get help along the way. Starting out with a lot of drive and passion is great but you might be taking steps in the wrong direction with all of that zeal. Working with a business coach can help you see things better and keep you in line with what you need to be doing which would help you achieve more and enjoy the process of doing this better.

Like a personal trainer at the gym, a coach will only help you realize how strong you can be but isn’t going to do the work for you. To get a good coach, find someone who shares your values, resonates with you and has a lifestyle that will challenge you to do more than you could have done on your own.

Blogging is a journey, not a destination. There will be bumps on the road but if you follow these helpful tips, you will enjoy a smoother journey and retain control all through the drive.

How To Start a Blog

How To Start a Blog

If you are you looking to start a blog, then you will find out how in this article. You will discover different things to consider and decide on when starting a blog. So let’s take a look at these:

1. Why do you want to start a blog?

Before you decide on opening a blog, the first thing to ask yourself is why do you want to do it? Do you want to blog for fun or for profit? If you direct visitors to your blog, what do you want them to do when they arrive. Or maybe writing is your thing, that is great. Blogging can be therapeutic in its own way.

2. What will your blog be about?

Having decided on why you want to own a blog, the next thing is to decide what you intend blogging about and what it is you want to blog about. What you will blog about will also be influenced by the people you are trying to talk to. There are several things to blog about like trending news, viral videos or hottest topics. You can be general or stick to a topic like pets or how to look leaner and fitter. This will make people see you more credible and knowledgeable about your field if you stay consistent. You can also blog about product reviews, they seem to be getting plenty of attention.

3. Do you want a free blog or a paid blog?

There are plenty free blogs all over the web. If you carry out a simple web search, you will find some. The most popular ones are blogger.com and wordpress.com. A more recent one is weebly.com. However, with most free things in life, there’s usually a caveat. A free blog is not entirely yours. Your domain name will be locked under a subdomain for example if your domain name was petdogs.com, with WordPress for instance, it will be petdogs.wordpress.com. This kind of domain is nothing like the normal ones you see out there. Also, most of the free platforms will not allow you to set up advertising on the site, which can be a bit of a setback if you are looking at paid blogging. If you are looking to make money from blogging, free blogging services are not recommended. They are only great to dip your feet in the water and get a feel of what blogging entails.

On the other hand, with a paid blog, you will pay for a domain name of your own and hosting for the website. The blog belongs to you and you have greater control over the blog when you start trying to earn money.

4. Choose Domain Name

Building on the paid blog discussed earlier, you will register a domain name for your blog. You can get a domain name for as low as $3 but it can also cost thousands depending on how popular the name is. Godaddy.com is the most popular domain name service to buy and register a domain name. You can have more than one domain name pointing to the same webpage. With your domain name bought, blog hosted, you are up and running and you have completed the first stage of starting your blog, the next stage is to focus on content and traffic.

5. Content

Now that your blog is up and running, the next thing to do is to start posting relevant content such as articles, pictures and videos. If you are lost for what to write on, you can look for trending news for popular news providers like CNN, ABC or visit YouTube to get trending videos or simply search for the latest news and information on Google.

5. Traffic

To round up your blog setup is to start receiving traffic. All of your hard work up till now will be wasted if traffic is not coming to your blog. You obviously want people to read your articles and watch the videos you post. There are many options for getting traffic. It all depends on your expertise and your budget. Traffic can be broken down basically into free or paid traffic.

Some free traffic sources include search engines, social media, forum posts, article marketing. Paid traffic includes PPC(pay per click) advertising, Banner advertising, and solo ads.

Now that you know what it takes to start a blog, you can fire up your computer and get started right away.