Whether you are interested in making money online, keeping friends and family up to date or just broadcasting yourself to the world all you need to do is set up your own blog. A blog, or web-log, is basically just a website where you can post your own content, usually for free.
You can set up a blog at Blogger.com for free, and you can even have as many blogs as you want. Anyway, Blogger does most of the work for you in setting up the blog. All you need to do is add the content and arrange the website to your liking.
So lets get started setting up our blog with Blogger. First of all you will have to visit Blogger.com to get started. As I mentioned before, this is a completely free service and is provided by Google. You can have as many free blogs, about as many different topics as you like.
On the front page at Blogger you will want to click on the big arrow that says "Create Your Blog Now". Now you will be taken through the process of creating your username, password and display name(the name as "posted by" at the end of each blog post). Last you will put in your email address (which has to be real) and check the box that says you agree to their Terms of Service.
Click continue to move on to the next page. On this page you will name your blog and select a blog address(URL). If your goal is to make money with your site you should try to pick a keyword rich URL and keep it as short as possible. Only problem here is that everyone else already has a blog, and someone has the blog address you wanted to use. Since you can't have the same address as someone else you may have to get creative. Next up is the hardest part. Word verification. All you need to do is to copy the almost(or sometimes completely) illegible word into a text box. Sounds easy, but wait till you see the font.
Once you get past the hard part you can move on to the fun part. Step 3 is choosing a template. This is where you get to look through the different templates Google offers and choose the one that suits you the best. You can use your own templates, or download them online, but that is more complicated and for another conversation. Once you have chosen your template click continue to move on to the next page and start posting to your blog.
When placing posts to your blog make sure to use a separate program to write your posts first. The reason is that it is much easier to write in a full sized window than in that little text box. You can then copy and paste the document into the text box on Blogger. I like to write in Notepad because it gives you simple .txt files with no coding. If you want(or know how) you can even add in simple html codes like links and pictures. Once you paste your post into Blogger and do a quick spell check you can click the "Post Now" button and viola. You have your own Blogger blog.
Finally you should play around with the settings and layout features under your blogger dashboard to become familiar with them. The settings may need to be changed to reflect your correct time zone and some little things like that. The layout section on the other hand is where you can set up and rearrange the layout of the web page itself. It is very user friendly and offers many options like adding pictures and video to you blog. Play around with it until you get your page just how you want it. Note: if you are looking to make money online this is the section where you can add your adsense. Since Google runs Blogger they have integrated the feature directly into the software making it simple to apply.
Lets face it, blogging is the wave of the future. Whether it be for business or personal use blogging is already the method of choice for millions to "get the word out" about anything and everything they are interested in. Are you ready to join the blogger revolution?
So you've decided to start an affiliate marketing campaign. Sounds like a great idea to me. Affiliate programs are a great way to make cash, especially if you already have your own website.
If you already have your own site, and it gets a good amount of traffic, you will be able to make a steady profit almost immediately with limited work on your part. If not, you should consider taking a course on internet marketing such as Profit Lance. This will help you learn how to choose the proper niche to market in, and help you to drive traffic to your website.
To help you get started I have provided five tips on how to choose the best affiliate program for you.
1. If you already have your own site make sure to pick a program that matches the content well. Keywords used to search for the product on search engines should all be contained in your website, as much as possible while still seeming natural.
If you don't have a site then pick a topic you know more about than the average person. Now I know that sounds hard, but believe me, you are smarter than you think. Once you have a topic you will build a website around it, and pick an affiliate program that matches.
2. Choose affiliate programs that pay high commissions. The best way to do this is to market information products. Many of the products for sale in the Clickbank Marketplace have commissions as high as 50% or more. This is because selling e-books is almost all profit. And if they only have to pay for advertising when they sell something......they can afford to pay you as much as they want.
3. Look for a program that offers products that you use yourself, or that you would be interested in buying. Value for value. Give the users a site with quality content and links to quality products and they will come back and buy. Heck, they may even send their friends.
4. Only join free programs. Although most affiliate programs are free nowadays there are still a few that charge a fee to be able to join. Avoid these, since you really can't know how well you will do with them until you have tested it on your site. The best place I have found to join is Clickbank. Clickbank is a community that is free to join and has hundreds of affiliate products available. All commissions are paid through Clickbank and not the individual companies, making it a safe and convenient way to market. And when you decide to market your own information products you can do so through Clickbank as well.
5. Focus your effort on finding programs that offer marketing support and training. Most affiliate sponsors give you a hop link and say "have at it". On the other hand, many of the top affiliate programs offer tools and resources to help you better market their product.
Keeping these five tips in mind will help you to when choosing an affiliate program. Remember you should be looking for a program that offers high commissions, in combination with good support. Combine these and you will be making money online in no time.
Nowadays it seems that every website you visit has one of those "ads by Google" sections to it, doesn't it? I wonder why that is. The answer ladies and gentlemen is because Adsense pays. Having Adsense on your website can help you profit in many ways, but you must first learn how to profit from Adsense.
First off, if you are new to Adsense you will need to start an account with Google. You can get yourself started by visiting www.google.com/adsense and clicking on "Sign up now". During the sign up process you will need to submit your website URL for Google's review. If you do not already have a website in place the easiest way to apply for Adsense would be to set up a blog with Blogger. Just pick a topic you have some knowledge of and write some content based blog entries about it. You can also pick up free content to add to your blog all over the internet, as long as you make sure not to violate any copywrite laws. Once you are all set up you will be able to place Adsense ads on any site you own by placing your unique publisher ID number in your website, or by adding the page element to your Blogger blog.
Before you begin placing Adsense ads on your site you will need to take strides to create some traffic to your website. Place some good content and socially bookmark your website. You can create a social bookmarking account with del.icio.us, or any number of other free services. Next you should write a few articles between 400-700 words long about the topic of your website and submit them at online sources such as ezinearticles.com. The next step will be to submit your website to some search engine friendly directories. You can find many free directories by searching on Google. Being listed on these directories provides lasting, targeted, one way links to your site, and can help your search engine rankings as well. These directories are the reason for waiting before placing your Adsense ads. One surefire way to get rejected by a directory is for your webpages to look like billboards!
Now that we have generated some traffic flow toward our website and been listed in some directories lets go ahead and add our Adsense. There are several things to consider when placing ads on your webpage. You must think about size, shape, color and placement of ads. Google provides excellent tutorials on this subject. One piece of advice that I have been given, and seems to work for many people, is to use the large rectangle format for ads. I have also seen that people most often click on ads if they are in the top left corner of the page. Another good idea is to place ads at natural breaks in your content, and to use colors that blend well with your website. You are not going to fool anyone into thinking it is not an ad, but it seems less blatant and therefore will more likely be read. Make sure to experiment with different ad formats, colors and placements to find out what works best for you.
At this point you may check your progress by logging into your Google Adsense account and looking at some of the reports they offer. You should expect to see traffic as soon as you place the ads on your site, but this will not be enough. Make sure to keep placing new content on your website. Place new content as often as possible so that you can increase your number of repeat visitors. No one wants to keep coming back to a site with the same old stuff on it. You should also continue to submit articles to your article directories. Submit your articles to as many directories as you can, don't just stick with one, and make sure to socially bookmark you site at as many different places as possible. The more links you can get to your site the better. Keep building.
For more in depth help on getting started in internet marketing please visit my website on How To Make Money Online. This website provides free, in depth product reviews on some of the web's top internet marketing courses.
