Can anyone make money blogging? Just about, yes. There are so many ways to use blogging to your advantage and you can do so with a minimum investment of $0. Google's Adsense program offers the opportunity to make money from targeted ads on your site or blog and you can even do so with free blogs such as on Blogger. They're both free to join and you can use them to build an income.
Successful internet marketers make money from blogging, entrepreneurs subsidize their income with this and people use it to make a few extra dollars here and there as well. Whatever your goals are, it just takes time and research to find out if you can make money by blogging.
How do you optimize your site for the best Google Adsense results?
There are many possible answers to this question and different people have varying degrees of success at Google Adsense. One of the key factors is patience and perseverance. It can take months to get to the minimum payout level of $100.00. Another factor is the mystery that surrounds the Google Adsense program. Google won't tell you how much money you'll make. You're also not allowed to ask people to click your ads and if Google suspects you are earning money via fraudulent clicks, you'll be banned in a flash. You want to learn the highest paying niches and get your website ranked well in order to maximize your Adsense earnings. How?
Not everyone makes money online blogging but those who are willing to try a few different things and spend a lot of time researching and learning about proven effective methods for making money via blogs from Adsense can not only hit payout but can get some good residual income floating in. There is a lot of information out there to help you learn about ways to increase your chances of success.
Tips for Google Adsense Success on Your Blog
First, you have to be sure you understand what the Google Adsense TOS (terms of service) expects from you, otherwise you could find yourself inching towards payout only to be suddenly banned with all your hard work down the drain. Make your sites as Google friendly as possible and be sure you adhere to the terms and conditions of the agreement with respect to the type of content you post. Learn SEO to get indexed, get traffic and get the google spiders crawling your blog. You might not want to tell your family or friends about your Google ads in case they decide to try to 'help' you by committing click fraud . Once Google bans you, reversing it is like trying to un-ring a bell.
Remember that the key to Adsense success is targeted advertisements. You want ads that pertain to your niche. If you don't have a niche on your blog, you probably won't develop much of a following. Don't overstuff your blog posts with the words and if you don't get desired ads come up, you might have to tweak your wording. If you overuse some of your words you could end up with ads that you didn't intend on getting.
Whether you're using free blogs or hosting your own, bookmark and visit other blogs in your niche to help get the desired traffic you seek. Link to others in your niche and they'll probably link back. Use blog networking tools and don't forget to ping, social bookmark and comment on other blogs.
Pique curiosity. If you reveal too much information in your blog posts, there won't be any reason to click on the ads. You want to reveal enough to provide engaging and interesting content but leave enough to the imagination that people will click a relevant Adsense advertisement on the page wanting to learn more which causes you to earn more. There are many ad placement strategies and only tests and trial will reveal the golden formula for you.
Using Google Adsense And Free Blogs
Pay per click (PPC)
Pay per click (PPC) is an advertising model used on search engines, advertising networks, and content websites/blogs, where advertisers only pay when a user actually clicks on an ad to visit the advertiser's website. Advertisers bid on keywords they predict their target market will use as search terms when they are looking for a product or service. When a user types a keyword query matching the advertiser's keyword list, or views a page with relevant content, the advertiser's ad may be shown. These ads are called a "Sponsored link" or "sponsored ads" and appear next to or above the "natural" or organic results on search engine results pages, or anywhere a webmaster/blogger chooses on a content page. Pay per click ads may also appear on content network websites. In this case, ad networks such as Google AdSense and Yahoo! Publisher Network attempt to provide ads that are relevant to the content of the page where they appear, and no search function is involved.
While many companies exist in this space, Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, and Microsoft adCenter are the largest network operators as of 2007. Depending on the search engine, minimum prices per click start at US$0.01 (up to US$0.50), these prices are often referred to as Costs Per Click (CPC). Very popular search terms can cost much more on popular engines. Arguably this advertising model may be open to abuse through click fraud, although Google and other search engines have implemented automated systems to guard against this.
AdWords
AdWords is Google's flagship advertising product and main source of revenue. AdWords offers pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and site-targeted advertising for both text and banner ads. The AdWords program includes local, national, and international distribution. Google's text advertisements are short, consisting of one title line and two content text lines. Image ads can be one of several different Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) standard sizes.
Google's AdWords division is based in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
AdSense
How AdSense works
- In order to put ads on a web page, the webmaster inserts JavaScript code into the page.
- Each time a page with an AdSense tag is visited, the JavaScript creates an iframe and sets its "src" attribute to the page's URL.
- For contextual advertisements, Google's servers use a cache of the page to determine a set of high-value keywords. If keywords have been cached already, ads are served for those keywords based on the AdWords bidding system. More details are described in the AdSense patent.
- For site-targeted ads, the advertiser chooses the page(s) to display ads on and pays based on CPM (cost-per-thousand-impressions, or the price advertisers choose to pay for every thousand ads displayed).
- For referrals, Google adds money to the advertiser's account when visitors either download the referred software or subscribe to the referred service.
- Search ads are added to the list of results after a user preforms a search.
- Since the JavaScript is sent to the web browser when the page is requested, it is possible for other site owners to copy the JavaScript into their own web pages. To protect against this type of fraud, AdSense customers can specify the pages on which ads should be shown. AdSense then ignores clicks from pages other than those specified.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is a web-based marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate's marketing efforts.
Affiliate marketing is also the name of the industry where a number of different types of companies and individuals are performing this form of internet marketing, including affiliate networks, affiliate management companies and in-house affiliate managers, specialized 3rd party vendors, and various types of affiliates/publishers who promote the products and services of their partners.
Affiliate marketing overlaps with other internet marketing methods to some degree, because affiliates often use regular advertising methods. Those methods include organic search engine optimization, paid search engine marketing, email marketing and in some sense display advertising. On the other hand, affiliates sometimes use less orthodox techniques like publishing reviews of products or services offered by a partner.
Affiliate marketing — using one site to drive traffic to another — is a form of online marketing, which is frequently overlooked by advertisers. While search engines, e-mail and RSS capture much of the attention of online retailers, affiliate marketing carries a much lower profile. Still, affiliates continue to play a significant role in e-retailers' marketing strategies.
Four Ps to Seven Ps (Marketing Mix)
In the early 1960's, Professor Neil Borden at Harvard Business School identified a number of company performance actions that can influence the consumer decision to purchase goods or services. Borden suggested that all those actions of the company represented a “Marketing Mix”. Professor E. Jerome McCarthy, also at the Harvard Business School in the early 1960s, suggested that the Marketing Mix contained 4 elements: product, price, place and promotion.
In popular usage, "marketing" is the promotion of products, especially advertising and branding. However, in professional usage the term has a wider meaning which recognizes that marketing is customer-centered. Products are often developed to meet the desires of groups of customers or even, in some cases, for specific customers. E. Jerome McCarthy divided marketing into four general sets of activities. His typology has become so universally recognized that his four activity sets, the Four Ps, have passed into the language.
The four Ps are:
- Product : The product aspects of marketing deal with the specifications of the actual goods or services, and how it relates to the end user's needs and wants. The scope of a product generally includes supporting elements such as warranties, guarantees, and support.
- Pricing : This refers to the process of setting a price for a product, including discounts. The price need not be monetary - it can simply be what is exchanged for the product or services, e.g. time, energy, psychology or attention.
- Promotion : This includes advertising, sales promotion, publicity, and personal selling, and refers to the various methods of promoting the product, brand or company.
- Placement (or distribution): refers to how the product gets to the customer; for example, point of sale placement or retailing. This fourth P has also sometimes been called Place, referring to the channel by which a product or services is sold (e.g. online vs. retail), which geographic region or industry, to which segment (young adults, families, business people), etc.
These four elements are often referred to as the marketing mix, which a marketer can use to craft a marketing plan. The four Ps model is most useful when marketing low value consumer products. Industrial products, services, high value consumer products require adjustments to this model. Services marketing must account for the unique nature of services. Industrial or B2B marketing must account for the long term contractual agreements that are typical in supply chain transactions. Relationship marketing attempts to do this by looking at marketing from a long term relationship perspective rather than individual transactions.
As a counter to this, Morgan, in Riding the Waves of Change (Jossey-Bass, 1988), suggests that one of the greatest limitations of the 4 Ps approach "is that it unconsciously emphasizes the inside–out view (looking from the company outwards), whereas the essence of marketing should be the outside–in approach". Nevertheless, the 4 Ps offer a memorable and workable guide to the major categories of marketing activity, as well as a framework within which these can be used.
Seven Ps
As well as the standard four Ps (Product, Pricing, Promotion and Place), services marketing calls upon an extra three, totaling seven and known together as the extended marketing mix. These are:
- People : Any person coming into contact with customers can have an impact on overall satisfaction. Whether as part of a supporting service to a product or involved in a total service, people are particularly important because, in the customer's eyes, they are generally inseparable from the total service . As a result of this, they must be appropriately trained, well motivated and the right type of person. Fellow customers are also sometimes referred to under 'people', as they too can affect the customer's service experience, (e.g., at a sporting event).
- Process : This is the process(es) involved in providing a service and the behaviour of people, which can be crucial to customer satisfaction.
- Physical evidence : Unlike a product, a service cannot be experienced before it is delivered, which makes it intangible. This, therefore, means that potential customers could perceive greater risk when deciding whether to use a service. To reduce the feeling of risk, thus improving the chance for success, it is often vital to offer potential customers the chance to see what a service would be like. This is done by providing physical evidence, such as case studies, testimonials or demonstrations.
Two levels of marketing
Operational Marketing executes marketing functions to attract and keep customers and to maximize the value derived for them, as well as to satisfy the customer with prompt services and meeting the customer expectations. Operational Marketing includes the determination of the marketing mix.
Marketing (2)
Two major factors of marketing are the recruitment of new customers (acquisition) and the retention and expansion of relationships with existing customers (base management). Once a marketer has converted the prospective buyer, base management marketing takes over. The process for base management shifts the marketer to building a relationship, nurturing the links, enhancing the benefits that sold the buyer in the first place, and improving the product/service continuously to protect the business from competitive encroachments.
For a marketing plan to be successful, the mix of the four "Ps" must reflect the wants and desires of the consumers in the target market. Trying to convince a market segment to buy something they don't want is extremely expensive and seldom successful. Marketers depend on marketing research, both formal and informal, to determine what consumers want and what they are willing to pay for it. Marketers hope that this process will give them a sustainable competitive advantage. Marketing management is the practical application of this process. The offer is also an important addition to the 4P's theory.
Within most organizations, the activities encompassed by the marketing function are led by a Vice President or Director of Marketing. A growing number of organizations, especially large US companies, have a Chief Marketing Officer position, reporting to the Chief Executive Officer.
The American Marketing Association (AMA) states, “Marketing is the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion, and distribution of ideas, goods, and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational objectives".
Marketing methods are informed by many of the social sciences, particularly psychology, sociology, and economics. Anthropology is also a small, but growing influence. Market research underpins these activities. Through advertising, it is also related to many of the creative arts. Marketing is a wide and heavily interconnected subject with extensive publications. It is also an area of activity infamous for re-inventing itself and its vocabulary according to the times and the culture.
Marketing (1)
Marketing is a societal process that is needed to discern consumers' wants; focusing on a product/service to those wants, and to mould the consumers towards the products/services. Marketing is fundamental to any businesses growth. The marketing teams (Marketers) have the task to create the consumer awareness of the products/services through marketing techniques; unless it pays due attention to its products/services and consumers' demographics and desires, a business will not usually prosper long-term.
Marketing tends to be seen as a creative industry, which includes advertsing, distribution and selling. It is also concerned with anticipating the customers' future needs and wants, often through market research.
10 Easy Steps To Making Money As An SFI Affiliate
The best way to build a thriving business is to take it one step at a time. Post the following 10 steps to making money in SFI in a prominent place on your wall as a constant reminder of your willingness to succeed...and encourage your team members to do the same!
- Sell SFI's product and services by advertising your Gateway Websites.
- Recruit new affiliates into your network by advertising your Gateway Websites.
- Upgrade yourself to Executive Affiliate (EA)s as soon as you can—10 SVP per month, anyway you like it.
- Upgrade yourself to Team Leader (TL) status as soon as you can.
- Monitor your network to ensure as many of your affiliates as possible become EAs as soon as possible.
- Monitor your network to ensure as many of your EAs as possible become Team Leader (TL) as soon as possible.
- Pass these steps you're reading right now on to each person in your team, preferably as soon as they come on board.
- Check out the SFI product or services of your choice. Your actions will help the company and your own business thrive.
- Consider buying a membership in SFI's International Association of Home Business Entrepreneurs (IAHBE). The tools and benefits you receive as an IAHBE member, when used, will dramatically and positively affect your business. IAHBE is the easiest way to advance to EA status, and a majority of SFI's active affiliates are members.
- Continue to build your network of affiliates, increasing your commissions along the way.
Thanks to Bill Alland, SFI Bronze Team Leader...
About SFI
SFI is a division of Carson Services, Inc., headquartered in Lincoln, Nebraska USA. Founded in 1985, Carson Services has a long and successful track record in the publishing and network-marketing industries. We are a longtime member of the Better Business Bureau serving Southern Nebraska, as well as members of the Lincoln Chamber of Commerce.
SFI is the exclusive marketing arm for the IAHBE (International Association of Home Business Entrepreneurs) and Veriuni™, a line comprised of nutritional, cleaning, personal care, pet care, telecommunication products, and more.
SFI was launched in 1998. Today, with tens of thousands of affiliates in over 200 countries, it is believed to be the largest affiliate network in the world.
SFI's unprecedented success has been largely attributed to the unique makeup of its affiliate program—a hybrid combination of the best parts of traditional direct sales and network marketing, combined with the technological advantages of the Internet. Highly automated, SFI's expansive core computer system processes thousands of requests a day, around the clock, from around the world.
