Archive for September, 2007
Monday, September 17th, 2007
And the Weekly Shark Bytes are back again, on Sunday, as usual, but a bit shorter this time.
Rhys has a very nice article on tracking your new RSS subscribers, How To Track New RSS Subscribers With Google Analytics in 3 Easy Steps.
A new addition to my feed reader, Derek Beau has a few great articles, like the one on bulk blogging and his 3 part case study on a blog like that: Building a profitable niche blog with minimal effort, Initial Steps and Promotion goals. With the article on bulk blogging he also reveals that he makes $3000/month with this method, from 23 low maintenance blogs, so its worth a read.
Matt goes linkbaiting again with Top 5 Blogging Success Stories.
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Saturday, September 15th, 2007
After the success of the Making Money With Mini Sites article, I thought of doing a follow up on the keyword research part and give away a few niche ideas for mini sites.
The figures below are taken from the GTrends tool (the data that appears when you click the stat icons). It’s not researched on Google for competition, since the purpose is just to show you how easy it is to find keywords for mini sites. Do your own keyword research and look on Google for the competition (skip those with edu and gov sites in top 10).
As I said in the previous article, all you have to do is pick random words (preferably from non-technical areas), enter them into the tool and see what related words appear. Then check the GTrends data for those that look more promising. By promising I mean keywords that people might actually use on a daily basis. Don’t waste your time checking out keywords like “cgi proxy secure socket layer for digg”. Again, click on this icon
to see the GTrends data, don’t use just the Wordtracker numbers. For this list I’ve started with the keywords layer, blanket, handy, inaccessible and dirt. Below are the keywords that seem promising, before any further research on the competition:
| Keywords |
Searches/day on GTrends |
Results for keywords in quotes on Google |
|
7 layer dip
|
465 |
71200 |
|
layers of the earth
|
521 |
96300 |
|
7 layer salad
|
170 |
29000 |
|
seven layer dip
|
320 |
50800 |
|
seven layer salad
|
225 |
39100 |
|
layers of the atmosphere
|
265 |
134000 |
|
choppy layers
|
55 |
12100 |
|
7 layer dip recipe
|
70 |
598 |
|
seven layer dip recipe
|
50 |
2080 |
|
seven layer salad recipe
|
35 |
558 |
|
7 layer bean dip
|
95 |
13800 |
|
7 layer mexican dip
|
45 |
1020 |
|
seven layer bean dip
|
45 |
9820 |
| |
|
|
|
pigs in a blanket
|
345 |
113000 |
|
pendleton blankets
|
110 |
64800 |
|
blanket stitch
|
190 |
92000 |
|
miracle blankets
|
285 |
73600 |
|
moving blankets
|
80 |
55300 |
|
pigs in a blanket recipe
|
65 |
862 |
|
baby blanket knitting
|
50 |
10600 |
| |
|
|
|
handy home products
|
110 |
22500 |
|
sony handy cam
|
225 |
27500 |
|
handy mandy
|
50 |
13500 |
| |
|
|
|
inaccessible boot device
|
300 |
45700 |
| |
|
|
|
honda dirt bikes
|
345 |
51200 |
|
yamaha dirt bikes
|
260 |
37800 |
|
used dirt bikes
|
400 |
35300 |
|
dirt bike racing
|
170 |
67300 |
|
kawasaki dirt bikes
|
95 |
29400 |
|
ktm dirt bikes
|
70 |
994 |
|
mini dirt bikes
|
270 |
66900 |
|
dirt bike tires
|
70 |
14500 |
|
cheap dirt bikes
|
160 |
22000 |
|
suzuki dirt bikes
|
75 |
11800 |
|
dirt bikes for sale
|
704 |
96200 |
Do the same.
- Pick some words to start from (or take them from a dictionary),
- check what related keywords show up,
- what GTrends says about them,
- make a list,
- check Google for the competition,
- group related keywords together,
- make your own mini sites, using either 19 Pages or WordPress
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Wednesday, September 12th, 2007
How much time are you spending on writing your articles? 30 minutes, 1 hour, 3 hours? If you’re John Chow or Darren Rowse, then I’m betting you get plenty of link love for each article you write, but if you’re not, why not spend an extra 5 minutes each time you write an article and get 5 links to it.
I’m talking about social bookmarking here. Sites like del.icio.us, except these 5 don’t attach the rel=”nofollow” tag to their links. Register to the social bookmarking sites listed below, bookmark the submit page for all of them, and just open them up each time you write an article and bookmark that url.
Social Bookmarking sites
Now, its true that you get links from just 5 sites this way, but it’s not that different from posting in a forum and getting links only to the homepage each time you post. They are pretty strong sites, and they should provide you with some extra strength to each article. It can help you rank better for long tail keywords that you might write about and even boost your PR for each page.
Don’t forget to tag your articles with a couple of keywords that are relevant. Usually you get a link from each tag page, either to the article, or to the page that links to you. So you either get more links to your article or you boost the PR of the page that links to you, depending on the site.
Do this, but don’t stop gathering links to your index page or other pages that you rank for. This method is just to give you an extra boost for your pages, not to be used for replacing all your link building efforts. Keep getting links from other sources as well, you don’t want all your links to come from just 5 domains.
Please make sure the bookmark is public, so it can be indexed by the search engines. It’s usually an option, to either make it private or public. Look for it, and make it public if the options exists.
Also, when you have very good articles, don’t submit them just to Digg, Reddit or Netscape. There are couple of other social media sites without the rel=”nofollow” tag attached on their links, and it can’t hurt to submit to them and get some extra link juice to those pillar articles.
Other social media sites (check if they’re appropriate to your story)
Any other social bookmarking sites that don’t have nofollow attached to their links that you know off?
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Tuesday, September 11th, 2007
A short tutorial on using the Shylock Adsense Plugin, since I’ve received a couple of questions over time.
What it can be used for:
- inserting either Adsense ads, or anything else really into posts. You can insert Adsense, YPN, CPM banners or buttons, a box with your top or favorite posts to bring them to the attention of your users
- controlling when the ads show and how. You can use no ads on the blog on article pages while they’re new, and you can set it up to start displaying ads once a certain period of time passes (you decide after how much time).
- block ads from showing on certain pages or articles. For example, you may have a page where you want ads, but you might prefer that your About, Contact or Advertise Here pages are ad free. Another use is for paid reviews, which usually ask you not to have ads in those pages.
Options:
Set Code #1-10
The plugin can remember 10 different codes that you might want to insert in your blog. Paste the Adsense code in the box, then either set it up where you want to appear below, or if you want to paste a second code, scroll all the way down, click Save, then click on Code #2 and paste another code. Don’t forget to save before you click on another Code area, or the code you just inserted will be lost.
Preview
It inserts your code in the admin page to show you how it would look like. I’m seriously considering removing this in future versions, because most people probably don’t read the entire plugin page and don’t realize that it shows their real ads. DON’T CLICK ON THEM!
Exclude posts and/or pages
You can choose not to display ads in certain posts or pages. Either because ads are not appropriate there (About, Contact, Advertise Here pages) or because you’re not allowed to have ads in paid reviews (the case for PayPerPost I think).
For this, go to the Manage page in your admin area, and see what ID do the posts or pages that you want blocked have. Enter those ID’s in the Exclude box, separated by commas and Save.
Displaying ads on the front page, categories, archive and tag pages
You can insert a maximum of 3 ads on these pages (the maximum allowed by Adsense), and you have drop-down boxes for each of them.
Code # - click and select the code you want inserted for that particular position
Alignment of Ads - choose where you want that particular code to be displayed (ad positions explained below)
Show to post number - choose where you want that particular code and alignment to be used in the page (posts 1-10)
Example of use: Code 1 at the Top of Post 1, Code 3 at the Bottom of Post 1, Code 2 at the Top of Post 3
Displaying ads in pages and single pages
The only difference from the front page example is that you’re missing the Post Number option. Other then that, its the same. Choose the code that you want to display and in what position.
Please take into account your typical post length and image positions when choosing the place and size of the ads, otherwise you might end up with a bad look for your article.
Single Page (older then X days)
Here you can choose to display a different ad setup for older posts, so you don’t annoy your regular visitors. Usually only search engine visitors come on a regular basis to old posts and now you can monetize those visits better by inserting more aggressive ads.
If there is any code selected in this area, then it will display this configuration to article pages once they turn the age from the box below. If you don’t select a configuration for this section, then all the posts use the setting you decided for the pages and single pages previously.
Ad Positions
Top - inserts the code between the title and the content
Top Left and Top Right - inserts the code in the top part of the content, surrounded by text
Middle - inserts the code in the middle of the post, between two paragraphs. Middle means here that it sees how many paragraphs there are in a post, then divides it by two and inserts the ad there. For example, in a 12 paragraph story, it will insert it after the 6th paragraph. You need at least 2 paragraphs in a post for the middle positions to display.
Middle Left and Middle Right - inserts the code in the middle of the post, surrounded by text. It actually inserts it in the top part of the second half of the post, so it might seem closer to the bottom.
Bottom - inserts the code below the content
Random - cycles the selected code among the positions that are not occupied by other ads. In order for the random setting not to use a position assigned to a fixed ad, you will need to insert the random one to the last setting in use.
Example: if you want to have a top left ad all the time and another one in random position, select first the fixed position, then the random one, like in the example pic below:
As you can see, I’ve got two ads for articles in this example, the random being the last one to be inserted. That’s because it checks where the previous ad was inserted, so it doesn’t use that position.
You can see how random works by selecting an ad and refreshing the page where it is inserted. You should see it in different positions every time.
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Sunday, September 9th, 2007
It’s Sunday, and it’s time again for the shark bytes. As usual, links to interesting posts helping you to make money online, that you might off missed:
From DoshDosh, the post that got my attention most this week was How to Become a Top Stumbler. I think he’s right. The entire point of StumbleUpon is for people to find interesting sites. It makes no sense to be able to become a top StumbleUpon user by adding friends. Interesting sites and a high rate of I like it from other people should be the only way to get to the top. Also, you might want to check out his Prosense Theme. I’m using it on another blog of mine and I’m very satisfied with it.
BloggingFingers shows you how to get some free PR 4 links. While you’re there, don’t forget to check out the 2 hours of blogging in 2 minutes video.
The Secret to Getting Search Engine Traffic - from Net Business Blog
A very nice series of articles from Earners Blog that I recommend is the Stealth Link Building part 1, part 2 and Social Link Scouting.
From Self Made Minds, Ethically Creating Fresh Content for Free.
Mark from 45n5 created a Top 100 list of blogs helping you to make money online.
Taking Advantage of Google’s Authoritive Domain Status from HarpzOn.
For those interested in going into video blogging (vlogging), there is an article on BloggingTips that should help: 5 Vlogging Basics.
And from Derek Semmler, the Secret to Earning More with Adsense. Interesting hypothesis.
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