Blogging for Profit Starts With a Plan

January 30, 2008

Many people dream of blogging for profit, and this goal is not far beyond the reach of someone with average intelligence, a willingness to work hard, and a basic grasp of blogging technology.

However, very few people manage to reap the profits they want from their blog. Most people who attempt to make money with their blogs do not succeed for two reasons.

1. Often, bloggers have unrealistic expectations of how fast their readership will grow and how much money they will make, and when these expectations are not met the disappointment can crush the desire to continue blogging.

2. The other trap that many bloggers fall into has to do with lack of planning. If you want to turn a profit as a blogger, the key to success is to make a realistic plan and stick with it.

To succeed at blogging for profit, the main thing that you will need is a large readership. The higher your traffic, the more advertisers will agree to pay you.

However, cultivating the regular visitors that you will need in order to make a profit isnt easy. As more and more blogs appear each day, having a great idea or a wonderful writing style is no longer enough to get attention. You need to be able to market your blog effectively.

Too many bloggers spend all of their time writing posts and almost no time marketing their project. To be certain, updating as often as you can is a great way to keep your blog high on blogrolls and high in blog search engines like technorati, and once your readers know that you update frequently they will return to your site on a regular basis.

However, it does not matter how often you update if nobody is reading your page, so dont skimp on the time that you spend drawing visitors to your site. To make your dreams of blogging for profit a reality, try decreasing your number of posts and using some of that time to draw new visitors by setting up link exchanges with other bloggers, making contacts in the blog community, and following other established modes of winning traffic.

Of course, even if you are a marketing genius or have a really great idea for a blog, success is not going to happen overnight. Building the kind of readership that blogging for profit requires takes time, and in all likelihood it will be at least several months before you are able to turn much of a profit.

Try to stay committed to your blogging project during this initial rough period. To stay motivated, set goals for how often you will update and how many readers you want to attract, and then reward yourself for sticking with your plan.

============================================
For more information on driving traffci to your blogs - or any site you wish - then you really need to grab The Web Traffic Pack right now!

Feel free to use this article on your own site. If you do, you must leave this resource box in tact.
=============================================

Written by Mike · Filed Under Articles

How To Use Video To Boost Your Website Sales Conversions

January 12, 2008

It’s a well known fact that many of us are primarily visual in the way we relate to the world round us. With this in mind, it only makes sense that you would be able to make the content of your web site more accessible by adding the video features to your web site.

The thing to remember about using video is that you need to keep it short, sweet and to the oint. No one is looking to settle down with a bowl of popcorn and a soda while watching the video presentation on your site.

You want the video to follow the same lines as your text. Let it be concise, to the point, and call attention to the features of your product or service that will be of most interest to prospective clients.

Prepare the text for your video script and run through it with a couple of people before you ever begin the process of videotaping. You want to make sure there are no dead spots in the text that would create a pregnant pause during the video presentation.

Also take care to choose locations that will provide you with sufficient light. Nothing will turn off a prospective client like clicking on a video presentation and finding it is too dark for anyone to see what is happening.

Videos, when planned well and accessible to any potential client, can help to set your website apart from your competition and boost your sales conversions.

If filming yourself doesn’t appeal to you a quick and easy way of creating videos is to create a powerpoint presentation and record this using a program like Camtasia Studio.

You can download a free trial from here http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.asp

What this software will do is it records everything that happens on the screen of your computer from the movements of your mouse to your voice when connected to a microphone. This recording can then be uploaded to your website in Flash format for quick and easy viewing by anyone visiting your website.

Once your video is completed be sure to also upload it to websites like: http://youtube.com and http://video.google.com which gives your product extra free publicity. You can even use those websites to host your video for you and link to it on your website which saves you any additional bandwidth costs.

Take advantage of human nature and how we see the world around us by adding video to your website to boost your sales conversions.

—————————————————————
Brian Terry is the publisher of a controversial top-secret report that reveals the secrets to increasing your website sales by 275% or more. You can get your free copy by visiting his website here: here: http://BigSellingConversions.com/?aff_id=755
—————————————————————

Written by Mike · Filed Under Articles

Internet Marketing: Not a Business, a Way of Doing Business

January 3, 2008

The very first step in succeeding at anything is learning to think right about it. In other words - MINDSET.

Learning to think right about IM (Internet Marketing) means recognizing that what you are doing is a way of doing business. The actual business you select must be tied to your biggest strengths. That means you must know yourself.

If you were attracted to IM because of the dream of instant riches with no startup costs and no specialized knowledge, your thinking is wrong! Very hungry lions will eat you up in no time. Those lions are unscrupulous marketers who depend on greedy but otherwise innocent victims who have a poor fund of knowledge about the Internet’s commercial side. They’ll keep gnawing on your credit card balance until you shoot them down.

Like a regular store or business, an Internet business sells a product or service with the aim of making a profit. The product or service is the focus; the Internet part is the means to reaching customers. There’s no magic system, method or Web tool that will produce something out of nothing. At least, there isn’t one at the time of this writing. If they invent a computer that can spend its own money, perhaps there will be. I wouldn’t bet on it!

You, as a prospective Internet Marketer, need to learn a few basics:
• Most people use the Internet to get information, not spend money.
• Those who do want to spend money online know what they want, usually in specific detail.
• Customers can be very selfish and fickle – if you don’t have what they want, they’re gone in an instant. If they bought from you and are dissatisfied, they’ll want an instant refund.
• If you don’t seem trustworthy, practically nobody will trust you with his or her money. Perception is reality, online.
• You need to be able to tolerate risk and uncertainty without panicking. Every business, online or offline, has slow periods, problems and temporary failures. You need staying power to stay in business.

There’s also the question of how you approach Internet Marketing. Are you a hobbyist or a businessperson? A hobbyist cannot use an online business as a tax write-off. A businessperson can. Turning a hobby into a business requires a level of commitment and due diligence beyond the needs of a hobby. It’s fine if you want to share your passion for a particular subject or pastime with a blog or Web page. Just know that if you want to turn that interest into a business, you need to plan it and work it like a business.

Having a passionate interest in something is often the best motive for starting an online business. If all you really want to do is make some money, get a job and let someone else handle all the problems and do all the real worrying. Passion will carry a business past the last barrier to long-term success – quitting when things get tough. There isn’t one successful business that hasn’t had a challenge that could have sunk it without a commitment to overcome that challenge, no matter what!

If you think you have what it takes to meet such challenges, with passion and commitment, follow the two rules for online success:
1. Get started
2. Don’t quit!

Now that you know how to think right about Internet Marketing, you won’t end up lunch for lions.

Written by Mike · Filed Under Articles