Tax Rebate & Why I Love EntreCard

First an update on the Tax Rebate for those of us in the USA that qualify. Always be thankful, it isn't much but it is better then nothing. In the end all we have are memories anyway.

Now on to Entrecard. I am starting to like EntreCard more. At first I thought the work to results ratio was not worth my effort.

But then I made a slight change and now I don't have to work as hard. I was dropping over 100 cards a day. But now I drop about 20 and because I like to see who the new blog are that visit me and I drop another 10-20 on blogs that I like to read. So I am down to about 40 from over 100 (close to 150).

Want to know what the big change was that I am so happy about ... keep reading.

When I first started I was dropping and visiting blogs. But I wasn't spending my credits.

The true power of Entrecard didn't kick in until I started spending my credits.

Now I earn more EntreCard credits per day when I did over 100 drops with much less effort.

More bloggers see my ad on other blogs, visit my blog and purchase an ad worth their EntreCard credits. It is a win-win for all involved.

There you have it. To take full advantage of EntreCard you have to regularly spend your credits.

Michael

How To Schedule BLOG Posts

The blogging platform I use now has a feature to schedule posts.

So now I can write up posts for when I am away and they will show up daily as if I were able to write and post them that day. This is a great feature for vacations and travel. Other then that I prefer to write and post at the same time.

To do a future post in Blogger all you have to do is click on the Post Options link. Then under post date and post time just set it be when you want it to post.

Simple as pie.

Many things going on right now, so I better get back to it.

Michael

Track Your Advertising - AdWords and Paid Links

Sorry for the delay in updates. I was working on a big project and had to focus my energy on that product.

Once a month I review my traffic and advertising for each of my sites and blogs. This helps me avoid throwing advertising money away.

First I check AdWords and adjust my spending based on how many sales I got. For products I am testing I adjust prices and keywords. Some of my product tests may be dropped if not enough sales convert.

Then I check my paid links to see how many visitors I got from those links. If my cost comes below 3 cents a click I may choose to buy another months of advertising from them. In most cases I find that text links don't bring in that much traffic.

Weekly I check and adjust advertising on some of my testing products and on new tests I always check daily. I use the tools at Wealthy Affiliate to help me find new products to promote and also with keyword selection.

Michael

Know Your Advertising ROI

Do you track your advertising spend vs. income?

If not you could be throwing money away.

I track a good bit of advertising online, including the competition. It is important to know what advertising is bringing in a profit and what advertising is throwing money away.

Some bloggers may advertise to build their brand, but I have a small budget so I need to see a profit.

There are multiple ways to track advertising, traffic and income source. Many of the networks allow tracking ids and this makes life even easier.

Michael

How To Run A Contest On Your Blog

I am currently participating in and watching an awesome contest run by Winning The Web.

The prize pool is currently over $9,000. Now that is one way to get attention for your contest. And the great part is most of the prizes are donated by sponsors.

I am a participant in the contest and this review will get me 10 entries. Would I do the review even if I didn't get the 10 entries, well yes. This contest is the best of 2008 and I doubt anyone will be able to beat it. I would be a fool not to tell my loyal blog readers about it.

As you can see on the Winning The Web blog I purchased a text link. Earlier in the week I mentioned testing an advertising source. So far the clicks are lower then expected. But I do get an added bonus that non-advertisers don't get. I see how many uniques per day his blog is getting. This alone is worth the $24 I paid for the text link.

Good luck to all who enter.

Michael

Where To Get Massive BLOG Traffic?

Where To Get Massive BLOG Traffic? Note, this is not a statement, but a question.

I often test advertising. Google AdWords, Yahoo, MSN, advertising on blogs, bumper sticker on my car, the list goes on a mile long.

ROI or return on investment, being time or money, is important when advertising.

Yesterday I spent $24 to advertise on a blog that is doing heavy promotion right now. This blog isn't getting a ton of traffic, but with the volume of promotion I know it is going to spike soon.

That is why I got in quick. When the traffic spikes, so will his advertising rates.

So far my ROI is very poor. Only 4 visitors came from that site.

I'm not worried because I still have 30 more days.

Google AdWords is the easiest form of advertising, but you can loose a ton of money quickly if not done right. I use the tools at Wealthy Affiliate to help me find good keywords as well as products to promote.

Take Care,

Michael

Blog Posting On The Weekends

I hear many bloggers say that traffic on the weekends is lighter then through the week. In the past I would do a re-carp of the week on the weekends because of this.

Looking at my stats I can see that some weekends are lighter while others have the highest traffic for the week.

I was posting 7 days a week and at times 2 or more posts a day. Over the past month I cut back to about 5 days a week. I found this works out best for me in terms of content and time.

Keep in mind this is just for the blog you are reading. I have MANY more. Some get updated more then others, but for the most part they are on a pattern.

I found the key is to write about a targeted niche and stay on target. The search engines then give you more weight in the search results for that niche.

I love the comments, keep them coming.

Michael

Short Posts or Long Posts

Do you prefer short blog posts or longer blog posts?

I read a ton of blogs every day in addition to about 3 books a month. The problem I have is finding a place to stop.

I prefer short blog posts and short chapters in books. It makes it easy for me to find a stopping point and mark where to continue the next day.

Pictures are a nice feature as well. I will have to start adding more photos to my blog posts.

What are your thoughts on blog post size?

Michael

How To Share Photos

There are many places online that allow you to share your photos. I belong to a few of them, but often I just email photos or burn a DVD to give out.

Today I uploaded to FaceBook some photos of my mission trip to New Orleans. While I could have uploaded the photos many places, I wanted to allow my friends to add comments to the photos.

I am starting to use FaceBook more for networking. As long as they can keep the pushy style of marketing out, it will be a nice place to network.

Time to get ready for a busy weekend. Feel free to check out my Photos on FaceBook. You will have to join if you are not already a member.

Michael

Back From New Orleans

I am back from New Orleans. The trip was a safe one. It is good to be home with my family, yet there is much rebuilding to be done.

Now on to internet marketing.

Looks like MyBlogLog is having a problem with adding contacts again. I will test this on my laptop as well, but I think it is a process problem, not a PC problem.

Today is catch-up day then back to work tomorrow. Even though I tried to check in this past week, there is plenty I need to get done.

Looking forward to starting a new site and testing some new advertising.

Take Care,

Michael

Update on Blogging Projects

I am heading to New Orleans to help with the rebuilding efforts for a week. There will be little or no blog posts until I return. Depends if I have time to write in the evenings.

If you are new here there are plenty of archives to read. Probably enough to fill a book or two. My suggestion would be to go back to the beginning and read all of them to here.

When I return the private advertising sales will begin. Post a comment here with your email address if you are interested in purchasing a spot.

I started testing a few new things and should have a report ready next month. With going away for a week I want to re-test some stuff before I put the stats together.

The traffic to some of my blogs has picked up. Most of them only get one post a week, so when traffic picks up I tend to get a little excited. It looks like natural search results, so if this keeps up for 2 weeks I will have to increase posting frequency on those blogs.

There were no entries for the Valentines Day contest. So no winner there. But I will have another contest sometime in the future. Next time the prize will be much bigger.

If you are interested in checking out the tools I use for research and making money just click --> here.

If you blog for money or you blog for fun, always enjoy what you do. It makes life easier.

Best of luck to everyone, see you in a little over a week.

Michael

Provide Exceptional Value and Live Forever

Ok, you got me. I added the live forever part. I had a conversation about vampires, so I just threw that in.

But in a sense you could be imortalized by providing exceptional value. Write an interesting book and it could be read thousands of years for now.

There are two directions I am thinking for this article.

First, free content. While writing free content is great, if it doesn't provide exceptional value visitors may never return.

This goes for offline as well as online writing.

Second, paid content. If you write an ebook that provides exceptional value and charge below that value you could have a customer for life. But provide marginal value at a fair price and you may have lost future sales from that customer.

Imagine going to the movie theater to watch a movie. The $7-16 to get in ontop of $8-12 for food make for an expensive experience. But what if at the end of the movie, the stars where there to take pictures and sign autographs for free.

People would no longer complain about spending $28 to see a movie because of the exceptional value added by the photos and autographs.

I am a bargan shopper. I buy good stuff, but as cheap as I can.

By providing value beyond what the customer expects they will look up to you. It is a win-win situation. They were happy to give you $20 for an ebook that was worth $47 and you have a customer that is more prone to make a future purchase.

Blog content may be free, but it must be good to keep people comming back. And if what you write (ebook, etc) isn't free, then customers better be asking you why you sell it so cheap.

Michael

Testing All Kinds of Advertising Income

After some thought I decided to open up advertising sales again.

I stopped last year when Google started dropping sites that had the TextLinkAds code on them. That was closely followed by the PayPerPost slap.

To avoid big brother Google from beating me up for something they have no problems doing themselvs I decided to make a change.

Starting in March I am going to open up private advertising again on my network of blogs. There will be paid post options as well as text link and advertising banner options as well.

I am heading to New Orleans a week from today and will be gone for 8 days. When I return I will start accepting advertisers.

If you are interested, just post a comment to this post and include your email. Don't worry the comment won't show on the blog and I will delete it after transfering your email adress to the advertising waiting list.

Prices will be cheap since I am cutting out the middle man (TLA & PPP).

When I start using private advertisers I will cut the AdSense SkyScraper back to a single ad unit. 125x125 I think it is.

Take Care,

Michael

Keyword SEO is Crazy This Week

I often spend part of my time working on SEO and part working on paid advertising.

While I would rather get my traffic for free, this past week has been crazy. Some of my sites dropped 20+ poisions and others are now on page one.

I'm glad to have multiple websites so changes like this don't have as much as an affect on my earnings. It is a little stressing with all the SEO work I have done to see a site drop in position.

On the positive side my paid advertising continues through rain, sleet, snow and hail. It isn't free traffic, but it is predictable. The only thing I have to worry about is conversion.

I use the tools over at Wealthy Affiliate to help me with both my SEO and paid advertising. I joined in September and can't say enough about how great their membership is.

Another nice benefit of a SEO shakeup is some small sites will bubble to the top and I can try and buy them quick before the owner realizes where the extra traffic came from. I believe you can never own too many websites and blogs.

Michael

MyBlogLog Checkmark and an Update

Today I finally got my checkmark on MyBlogLog for my One Penny Project BLOG. You can see it here. While you are there, please consider joining my community.

The process to get the checkmark was the same that Technorati uses to verify that you own a blog. It only took me about 2 minutes.

Now my blog will stand out for a little while until others catch on and start getting their own checkmark.

Michael

Free BLOG or Hosted BLOG

This past weekend I had to upgrade my server operating system.

The OS I was using will no longer be supported after March 15th. Not that I care much about support, but my provider where the server is running from required the upgrade for all customers.

I am a computer geek, so doing the upgrade did not scare me. What I was worried about was the downtime for my sites and BLOGs.

Overall the process went well. The upgrade took a couple hours and I spent the rest of the weekend getting my main sites back online and running. The rest get very low traffic so I will do them over the next couple days.

One thing I forgot to do before the upgrade was to stop my advertising. That should be listed in the steps to do. I didn't waste that much on lost advertising.

So after doing the upgrade this weekend I can tell you that I have a new appreciation for free BLOGs.

Michael

Work For Traffic or Buy it

When you are only making a $2 a day it is hard to justify spending money on advertising.

That is why I posted yesterday about the importance of selling your own ebooks. When you sell a higher valued item and make more money, you have more money to advertise.

There are hundreds of ways to get traffic to your website. While some of the free methods can be fun, they are all a ton of work.

Buying traffic still involves some work, but I would rather spend 10-20 minutes a day monitoring my advertising, then 2 hours a day doing free traffic methods.

Using the tools at Wealthy Affiliate helps reduce the time I spend working on my advertising. Heck, Wealthy Affiliate is loaded with tools that I use to make money with my websites and blogs.

Michael

Make $20 Instead of 25 cents

I mentioned this a few times before, but I am going to bring it up again.

Many site owners and bloggers check their AdSense stats every day. I too was guilty of doing this.

Do you have days where your income is below $3.50? Or worse, below $1.

Because of the Google $100 limit, in order to get a check every month you need to average about $3.50 a day. Why focus so much energy on $3.50 a day?

But what if instead of checking AdSense every day for pocket change you instead check your email for $27 (more or less) payments. Imagine the feeling of seeing payments in your email every day and not caring so much about AdSense.

Keep in mind when selling your own products you don't have to wait to be paid. you get paid right away. This is something you don't get with AdSense or most affiliate products.

That is why I prefer to promote my own products or products I own the rights to over trying to make a buck with AdSense.

I would rather have my visitors buy from me instead of tossing some change as they click on an ad to leave my site.

For those not ready to create their own information product, read my post from yesterday about PLR products. These are high quality ebooks that you can modify and put your name on and sell for 100% profit. The package includes a sales letter and all the stuff you need to start selling right away.

If you are ready to create your own information products, the 8 week course at Weathly Affiliate will teach you what you need to know.

Michael

Getting More Traffic To Your Blog

Where does your blog traffic come from?

I use Feedburner to keep track of my RSS & BLOG traffic. The ability to see both numbers in one place and look at the data is important to me.

A percentage of my traffic comes from search engines. Somewhere near half. The rest comes from multiple sources. MyBlogLog brings in some traffic and those visitors often leave comments too. I like comments.

Now for getting more traffic.

Driving traffic to your site or blog is hard work. More so depending on the source.

Not only do you have to manage your onsite content, but also your offsite SEO. Not an easy task.

With my project goals of $200 a day in 2008 I will be doing plenty of work on driving traffic.

What is your favorite method for driving traffic and what is your highest day?

Michael

Traffic Is The Lifeblood of Income

It goes without saying. If you don't have traffic to your site you can't make any money. That doesn't mean that having thousands of visitors every day is a guarantee of income.

Last night I was working on my new website. I worked up until the point I barely had the energy to get myself to bed.

Today I goofed off a little and should have jumped on working on my new site instead. Now it is time for Survivor, then back to my new site.

There are many ways to get traffic to a site, but knowing how to get targeted traffic is key. My plan is to focus on the targeted traffic and not worry about the generic traffic.

Time for Survivor, then I have to get back to working on my new site.

Michael