Blogs are here to stay, and many Wahms (Work At Home Moms) are taking advantage of the trend. Making money with blogs is a popular choice for many work at home moms. Blogs are simple to set up, and relatively easy to update. This is especially true when you compare blogs to other types of websites. Within just a few minutes, you can set up a professional looking blog for free and start your Wahm blogging business.

A blog is an easy to update website that looks sort of like a journal. Entries are made at a minimum of each week, and the newest entries appear at the top. Usually entries are short articles containing 200 to 500 words. Readers use a blog reading program to visit the blog or read new entries. Readers can also comment on entries and provide links between their own blogs and your blog.

With blogs, the opportunities are wide open. Looking at your own life for inspiration makes choosing a blog topic easy. There are blogs about every topic, from gardening to make-up to celebrity news. Before you start a blog, do some research on the Internet to see if people are interested in your possible blog topic. If you have a dedicated group of people who are interested in your topic, it doesn’t have to be a popular one.

When you pick a topic, make sure to stay within a fairly small “niche.” The term niche is used to describe a group of people who have a similar interest. There are big niches – like working at home – and small niches – like tips for training your cat to sit on the toilet. Try to find a happy medium between a popular topic and a niche interest so your blog has plenty of readers. Some topics, like working at home or parenting, are too broad and have too much competition for readers.

You can use a free blogging platform like www.blogger.com to set up your blog or www.wordpress.com. You have dozen others to choose from. To make your first entry into your blog, the blogging platform will walk you through it.

After you’ve made a few entries into your blog, it’s time to monetize your blog. This means you’ll be making specific changes to your blog in order to make money. To gain income from a blog you can use a contextual advertising program, like Google Adsense or Chitika, it is one of the most popular ways. Contextual advertising pays you for each time a reader clicks on one of the advertising links on your page. To place advertising on your page that relates to your page content, the advertising program will scan your blog entries for keywords.

For instance, the ads next to the article will have to do with Sesame street if you are writing an article about the program because you have a blog on children’s television. They might be links to shopping for Sesame Street items, or an ad for vintage Sesame Street collectables selling on ebay.

Start today your own money making blog!

-Albert-

What is “Monetizing Your Blog?”

Some people believe that monetizing your blog is unethical and immoral. Some people believe that monetizing is just a cheap way to make money from home. If you think along these lines, this blog is not for you. Here, we will learn all of the secrets of monetizing your blog successfully, and the secrets of how to make money from the comfort of your own home.

If you have mixed feelings about monetizing your blog, then sort out those feelings first. If you are not fully prepared to undertake the daunting task of monetizing your blog, then do not continue. When you are ready to learn how to make great money by blogging, continue reading.
OK, now that you are ready to learn, first you have to be fully committed to monetizing your site. If you are going to put up a few adsense ads, really put up adsense ads. A puny little square text box in the corner of the screen is not going to cut it. If you are going to be asking for some donations, really ask for those donations. “Don’t take a half approach. Either be a full or no approach.”

You shouldn’t worry about complaints. If you are worried that you might scare off some loyal readers, you shouldn’t be. Usually, you will only get 1 in 1000 people who complain about the ads; and eventually that one person comes to realize that the ads are there to stay.

How much can I make online with my blog?

Truth is, you can’t really know until you put up some ads. Some people that I know make six-figures blogging online, while others are content with only make a quarter a day. The people who are making six-figures are totally dedicated to their craft. They spend time every day updating their blog, and the readers appreciate that, which means they will come back. If you want to make serious cash with blogging, you need to be fully dedicated and have something interesting to say. Readers will not come back if your feeding them the same crap. You need to stick out in the blogging world for people to notice you.

Now, let me get back on track. The amount you can make online with a blog is directly tied with how much time you are willing to put into the blog. Don’t expect to be making a decent living the first day the blog is up. You need to continue working at it to make a good amount of cash.

The amount of money you can make with your blog is also tied in with where and how you place the ads. If you are using google adsense, there are a number of options when it comes to how to place the advertisements. The format that I have the most success with it the large rectangle. Use matching colors to make the advertisement seem like part of the page. You will get a great CTR (Click-Through-Rate) if you follow this advice.

What skills do I need to be able to make money with my blog?

Well, you’ll need a number of skills in order to be a good blogger.

You need to be:

1. Insightful
2. Have some intelligence on the matter your speaking of
3. Humorous (sometimes)
4. Dedicated to your craft
5. In love with what you are doing

I mentioned number 5 because it is one of the most important things a blogger needs. If you do not like blogging, then there is absolutely no reason to be blogging. If you do not love what you are doing, then you will probably become bored. Personally, I love blogging. It brings joy to everyday life. I like to see what other people think about issues that I like to discuss. That’s what is needed to be a good blogger.

You also need to have a rough idea of how to keep your blog in shape. By that, I mean you might need to know a little bit of:

* HTML
* Javascript
* CSS

It is not necessary to know these things, but it does help in making your website attractive.

Conclusions

If you are really into blogging, and really want to monetize your blog, then good for you. But, it does not mean that you will definitely become rich. Only about 1 in 99 bloggers will find some cash in what they love doing, but if you are willing to take a leap into the world of blogging, then you may be that 1.

-Albert

In my previous list building article I was discussing how to drive massive amounts of traffic to your squeeze page. Though very effective, the traffic sources I listed were also very beginner friendly. Today I’m going to take it to the next level and show you have to drive even more traffic, with some more advanced resources – note that these aren’t supposed to replace the resources in the last article, they are meant to be add-ons to your overall traffic strategy.

But before we get started on that we need to take a close look at your conversion tracking…

Conversion Tracking & Split Testing

Hopefully you have set up your conversion tracking after reading last week’s article. As I mentioned there are a couple of reasons why you want to pay close attention to your conversion tracking stats, let’s take a close look at two of them…

1. With proper conversion tracking you know the exact cost of one new subscriber to your list. If you (on average) pay 25 cents per subscriber at source A, and 50 cents at source B – you of course want to focus your advertising budget on source A (all other thing being equal).

But since you have monetized your sign up process and have a good auto responder follow series - you also know roughly how much money you make from each new subscriber going through your follow up series.

So if you earn $1 per person going through your follow up series (that’s a very realistic number btw), and we take a look at the example above – you would of course keep purchasing as much traffic as you can from both source A and B, for as long as the conversion rates and earnings stays up.

And that’s the beauty of doing proper conversion tracking and knowing your numbers. You can pretty much automate (pay for) most of your traffic generation and still be in profit – and that leaves you with time for testing and tweaking your pages, emails etc. to improve your conversions and earning, and for developing new systems and products.

2. But just because you are in profit doesn’t mean you should be satisfied. You should use your conversion tracking to continuously improve your squeeze page. That way you can raise you conversion rates, decrease your cost per subscriber and in turn allow you to build your list faster, for bigger long term profits.

What you want to do is run some simple split tests on your squeeze pages. I’m not talking about advanced taguchi testing, although you can do some pretty advanced stuff with a free Google Analytics account – I’m talking about simple A/B split tests, here’s what you want to do:

1. Make two versions of your squeeze page (for each different traffic source). Rotate the two pages so each of them get 50% of the traffic. This is very easy to manage using Hitsconnect as they have conversion tracking and rotators.
2. You want to test simple changes, like a different headline, changing one of the bullet points, changing the font style or background colour etc. You ONLY want to split test one thing at a time, otherwise you won’t know what is causing the change in conversion rates.
3. When you have collected enough tracking stats to determine e.g. which headline is converting the best. You toss out the losing squeeze page and keep the winner.
4. Then you try to beat the winner by creating a new squeeze pages testing something else, like changing a bullet point.

This sort of split testing is an ongoing process, that will continue to improve your conversion rates and thus both speed up your list building and earn you more money.

If you want to know more about conversion tracking, I recommend that you download this free ebook “Tracking Your Way To Profits“.

And now it’s time to start generating even more traffic to your squeeze page…

Step 1: Using JV Giveaways

I have been using JV giveaways for years, and as a result I have added thousands of new subscribers to my lists. Contributing to a giveaway is one of the fastest and most effective list building techniques I know of.

Essentially a giveaway is a huge co-registration/list building JV… All the contributers upload a gift and then promote the event to their existing lists. The members, who sign up for the giveaway, can then browse all the gifts, and if they find something they like, they need to sign up for that particular contributors list to get the download link. As a general rule gifts will rank by the number of referrals contributors put in – and the higher your rank is, the more subscribers you will likely get from the event.

If you have followed the steps in the first two articles, it should be easy for you to get started using JV Giveaways. The squeeze page set up and follow up series are perfect for this – and as you build your list using the other traffic methods, you can leverage that list to rank well in the giveaways, and thus bring in even more subscribers.

Power Tip: You want to be on the first page of the giveaway, but you don’t want to put more of your own subscribers in there, than absolutely necessary to achieve it. I tend to use safelists and list builders a lot when promoting giveaways. That way I can still build my gift rank and get a lot of new subscribers, without having to share my existing list with all the other contributors.

Here is a recommended JV Giveaway resource.

JV Giveaway Secrets an excellent free to join site with some good information on how to best use giveaways. But the main reason I’m recommending it, is that they will also keep you updated on new giveaway events that are worth contributing to.

Step 2: Using Article Marketing To Build Your List

Article marketing is a long term strategy that can build a consistent flow of traffic to your squeeze page. Here’s how it works:

You write some short 400-600 word articles on the same topic as your squeeze page, free gift and follow up series. Whatever you write about make sure it does not read as a sale letter, your articles should be purely informative. If you don’t want to write your own articles you can do like me, and go to somewhere like elance.com to find a ghost writer.

You then submit your articles to all the popular article directories, my two favourites are Ezine Articles and Isnare

When webmaster and ezine publishers look for free content to reprint on their websites and in their newsletters, they turn to the article directories. In exchange for the free content, the publishers agree to leave the article intact and include your resource box. This is where you get your traffic… Every time someone reprints one of your articles, your resource box is included, with a link to your website. Because the article directories often have a good search engine rank you are also likely to get some search traffic to your articles – provided that you write about a topic people actually search for (and use a headline + keywords that are optimized for the search engines).

The key to getting good results from article marketing is to write an awesome author resource/bio box. This is an incredibly crucial part of the system, that you need to spend some time on. Don’t waste the efforts of your article writing by slapping down an ineffective bio box like,

Joe Schmo is an expert in golf. Click
here to find out more info on golf
–> www.golfmastery.com

Consider the author resource box like an ultra-small salespage where your one goal is to get that reader to click on your link. You only have a few sentences to hook the reader with curiosity and then give him a powerful reason why he should click on your link.

In our example, I would probably use something similar to the following:

Joe Schmo is a golfing expert who recently developed an
eCourse that details a step by step process for adding greater
distance to your long drives. If you are interested in learning
more about his “5 Ways To Add Distance To Your Drives” eCourse
and shedding strokes of your game, please go here:
=> www.golfmastery.com

Power Tip – The 2 Part Strategy: Consider breaking your articles up into two parts. You can then post the first part to the article directories (include “Part 1? in your headline) – in your resource box you then people to click the link to get part 2 of the article. If you articles are good, that will give your click trough rate a significant boost. You can either post part 2 on your blog (which would then have some form of lead capture on it) – or you can send them to a squeeze page where they opt-in to get part 2 (and probably another freebie to convince them to part with their contact details).

If you want to learn more about how to use article marketing effectively, I recommend that you download these two great free ebooks: Free Traffic Secrets and The 22 Step Plan

Step 3: Using Your Blog To Build Your List

Using a blog is the absolute easiest way to rank well in the search engines. Set up a WordPress blog and start posting articles on the niche topic you are trying to build your list in. I’m not going to write a whole lot about how to set up your blog and get traffic to it - I will write a post on How To Setup A Profitable Blog in the next few days.

The key is to convert some of the search engine and web 2.0 traffic, your blog will be generating, into subscribers for your list. I know I’m a bit biased but the most effective way I know of, is to add a Floating Action Button with an optin form to your blog. You can see the FAB script in action over at Mike Paetzold’s blog

If you want to learn more about blogging I highly recommend FirePow

Step 4: Building Your List With PPC Advertising

I’ve saved Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising for last, because it’s one of the hardest traffic generation methods to master – also I don’t use PPC very much, so I’m by no means an expert. But it deserves to be mentioned because it can, without a doubt, be one of the fastest and most cost effective ways to build a list. If you want to learn a bit more about PPC advertising I recommend that you download this free ebook: Adwords Made Easy

I’ve seen a lot of people waste a ton of money on Adwords, because they rushed into something they didn’t really understand. Here are a couple of warnings you need to pay attention to, before you start your first PPC campaign.

1. Remember that you pay for every click – it does not matter if people subscribe or not. Use the other traffic source to make sure you have a squeeze page with a decent conversion rate before you start running it in Adwords.
2. Figure out what you earn on average per subscriber going through your one time offers and follow up series. That number along with your conversion rate will determine the maximum you want to pay per click. For example, if you have a 50% conversion rate and you earn $1 per new sub you could afford to pay up to $0.50 per click and still break even.
3. Google will assign a quality score to your landing page – basically the better your quality score, the less you have to pay per click. The short squeeze page we have been using so far is not that good for PPC campaigns. What you can do is take that page and add an article beneath it (the article needs to relate to the keywords you use in your campaign)
If you really want to get into PPC advertising I highly recommend seeking out Perry Marshall, he is THE authority on PPC advertising.

So Was That All The Traffic Sources

Nope… Not by a long shot. As I have said before there are hundreds if not thousands of ways to generate traffic to your squeeze page. What I have highlighted here, and in the last article, are the methods I use the most. As a list builder the key is to look at all the different traffic generation methods and think, “hmmm… how can I use this to build my list?” And again, I highly recommend that you also read the Free Traffic Secrets.

What You Have Now & What Is Coming…

We are approaching the end of this article series. If you have been following my suggestion so far, you should now have a fully monetized squeeze page system, a great follow up series and a steady stream of traffic that converts into new subscribers. Your job is to keep that flow coming and to keep testing and tweaking, so you can keep increasing your conversion rates and earnings.

With a constantly growing list of subscribers you are well on your way to true internet marketing success – in the final article in this series, I’m going to discuss how you can leverage that list to get in on juicy JV deals, create your own products etc. This is where we start talking about getting “filthy rich” on the internet. Stay tuned for the next article

Got Any Questions Or Comments?

Please leave a blurb below if you have any questions about some of the traffic methods, a comment on the article – or maybe there is a particular aspect of JVs and product creation you want me to talk about in the next article? Thanks for reading – I hope you found the information useful.

By Soren Jordanson

I?m going to focus on helping you get started building a profitable list, and today I?m going to talk about ?how to set up your squeeze page and monetize the sign up process?.

The purpose of this series is provide you with a step-by-step blueprint to internet marketing success. It will be based on actual survey results, and thus targeted towards the ?newbie?. But every step is critically important to the whole process, so don?t assume you ?know it all? and think you can skip things – Unless you are already wildly successful in internet marketing, you want to take action and implement these steps today!

Don?t Dig For Gold – Sell Shovels

This is where most people get it wrong? They jump from program to program, searching for that one push-button system that will make them rich. They are digging for gold in the vast world of hype and scams. What savvy marketers realize is that the real money is in teaching the millions of opportunity seekers how to make money online, and selling them the tools they need to do so. Just look at this article – if you think about it – I?m selling shovels right now, based on what the survey told me the gold diggers need.

Not entirely sure what this shovel selling talk is all about? Ok, here?s your first assignment: Read this sales letter from Russell Brunson and pay special attention to the part about selling shovels.

Step 1: The Tools You Need

Before we get started setting up your list building system, we need to make sure you have the 3 essential tools in place. Without these it will be impossible for you to build a profitable internet marketing business. Based on the survey and comments I realize that most people would like to get started for free. Unfortunately there are always start up costs associated with starting a business. Throughout this series I will recommend the tools and services I use, but I will also strive to give you a free alternative (if there is a decent one out there)? Ok, so here is what you need:

Auto responder: this IS the most important part of your business. It is where you will collect your subscribers and email them. Your auto responder will likely account for over 90% of your online income – this is not where you want to cut corners. Here?s what I recommend: AWeber is hands down the best service. It?s what I use and recommend – and it will be the auto responder of reference for the rest of this series. If you really want a free auto responder you can grab one at Email Aces (scroll down to the P.P.S. and click the link) – Be aware that you will be limited as to the size of list, numbers of emails and campaigns you can have, and they will place 3rd party ads in your emails (nothing is ever truly free).

Hosting: you need somewhere to host your pages. I use and recommend BlueHost. Great service and very affordable. The standard package will be more than enough for most list builders.

Ad Tracking: You need a way to track your ads. There is a gazillion ad tracking programs out there, but it is very important to use one that lets you track your conversion rates. If you want a free service you can grab a Goto-Pro free trial here.

Step 2: What Kind Of Shovel Are You Going To Sell?

Next thing you have to do is find your hook, also known as your ethical bribe (usually an ebook, video, audio file etc.). This is what is going to convince people to part with their contact info, and subscribe to your list. Your squeeze page needs to convince then that you have information they need, and that they can only get it if they sign up – Your hook (or gift) must have enough perceived value to make this happen.

But before you pick your hook, you need to think about why your are building a list. What are you going to write about? What are you going to sell to your list? Your squeeze page and gift needs to attract the people who are interested in your topic – not much point in having a traffic exchange ebook as the lead in, if you are mainly going to write about, and sell blogging stuff. Check out the defining your offer article from Mike Paetzold for more info.

Your list can have a broad internet marketing appeal, we do all use a wide variety of products and services – but you are best off if you focus on one niche (inside internet marketing). Establish yourself as an expert on that, and then build from there.

There are a ton of membership sites where you can find something to give away on your squeeze page. Resale Rocket is one of my favourites. If you use Instant Squeeze Page Generator to build your squeeze page, they already have a selection of gifts in there you can use.

If possibly try to find a gift that you can rebrand with your own affiliate links. Having your links in hundreds of ebooks sitting on people?s desktops can potentially create a lot of sales over time. Just one of those extra little income streams, as people trip your affiliate landmines.

Even better? consider writing your own ebook or creating your own product to give away on your squeeze page. That gives you full control over what you want to promote in there – but more importantly the hook is unique, they haven?t seen it before, and they can?t get it anywhere else. Having a unique gift will usually increase your conversion rates. If you don?t want to write your own ebook, you can go to something like elance.com and get a ghost writer to do it for you.

Step 3: Set Up Your Squeeze Page

Time to set your squeeze page? I recommend that you keep it short so everything is above the fold (means they don?t have to scroll or just a little). The squeeze page has only one purpose and that?s to collect subscribers, don?t dilute your efforts by including banners and links to other thing, it will only hurt your conversion rate. Here are the key components of a good squeeze page (don?t leave any of them out):

1. A strong attention grabbing headline – this should force them to stop and read your page but also instantly point to the benefits of signing up.
2. A couple of bullet points with details. Don?t list the features, list the benefits
3. I nice image of the gift they will receive
4. A strong call to action
5. Your opt-in form, remember to change the standard ?submit/subscribe? button to something sexy. People don?t like to submit and subscribe – but they sure do like to ?Click Here For Free Instant Access!?
6. A little blurp about keeping their details private.

I have just created an example squeeze page to give you an idea. You want to create something very similar to this: See my example squeeze here.

If HTML is a foreign language to you, I recommend that you use this free website builder, it comes with some great tutorials and some good bonuses you can use to build your squeeze page. Alternately you can use something like Instant Squeeze Page Generator, where you can point and click your way to a good squeeze page.

Finally? when you create the opt-in form for your squeeze page, you will (almost always) have the option to redirect them to a thank you page. Don?t leave the standard AWeber page up, use this feature – Here?s what you can do?

Step 4: Monetize Your Thank You Page

Your thank you page is a prime piece of real estate. By signing up, people have just demonstrated that they are interested in what you have to offer – it?s time to test that commitment towards a sale. This is your first chance to monetize the list building process (aside from any links in your gift) – but unfortunately it?s a step that most people miss. With a little bit of testing and tweaking you can often turn a profit on the thank you page alone. Here are some of the thing I prefer my opt-in forms to re-direct to:

1. A one time offer: There?s a free service called OTO Goldmine that will let you create one time offer within minutes. Here?s an example – it took me two minutes to set up and they even host the OTO for me (and deliver the products). Notice how I?m both monetizing my thank you page, and telling them to go check their email for the confirmation link.
2. If there is a good product directly related to my gift, I like to send them straight to the sales page. They have already demonstrated an interest in the topic, and taken action on the offer. They are hot prospects to send to the sales page. I?ve found that this strategy works best of you can find some low cost products e.g. $7 reports or some good free to join sites, with good converting one time offers e.g. Butterfly Marketing sites.
3. Or you can use a co-registration service like Advertising Know How – You will be showing ads for other people?s ezine on your thank you page, and in exchange your ezine will be shown on their thank you pages. While this won?t earn you money directly, it will likely boost your list building by 20-30%, making you more money long term. When I?m sure that my follow up series is making money, I prefer to use co-registration on my thank you page, but?

The bottom line is that you have to use something, don?t leave it blank – pick one of the strategies above and monetize this prime piece of virtual real estate.

Step 5: Get People To Confirm Their Subscription

Now that they have signed up for your list, and you have presented them with an offer of some sort – You want to make sure that they click the email confirmation link so you can continue to send them emails. Here are a few changes you need to make to your AWeber ?Verification Message? (found under List Settings => Verified Opt-in).

Change the subject line to something like:

{!firstname_fix}, Confirm To Download Your ?Gift Name? Report?

Change the verification message (Intro) to something like:

Hi {!firstname_fix},

Thank you for requesting your free copy of my
?Gift Name? report. Before I can send you the
download link I need to make sure I have your
permission, so?

Please click the link below to go to the download page?

Finally AWeber also has a feature called the ?Confirmation Success Page?. Don?t ever leave this blank, this is another piece of real estate you can monetize. I like to use OTO Goldmine here, especially if I?m using the co-registration on the thank you page. Here?s what I do?

1. I log in at OTO Goldmine and create an offer like this one
2. I make the ?no thanks? link go to my actual download page
3. And I then put the link for the OTO in AWeber, as my ?Confirmation Success Page?

As you can see this serves a few purposes. First of all I will hopefully make a sale, but the page also tells them to go check their inbox for an email from you (a nice habit, we want them to get into) – and finally the ?no thanks? link will send them to the download page as promised.

Step 6: Optimize Your Download Page

This is pretty straight forward, but very important. You want to keep people happy, so provide them with clear instructions (step-by-step if necessary) on how to download your gift. Your download page is also another piece of valuable real estate, where you can present them with an offer. It works best if it?s a free to join thing (that pays you if they buy the OTO) – make it look like an extra bonus to their download.

Step 7: The First Email In Your Auto Responder

This one is very important, and you want to accomplish a few things with it:

1. Give them the download link again in case they missed it – especially important since you used the ?Confirmation Success Page? to send them to a one time offer.
2. You want to make them another offer. You are building a list because you want to make sales, you might as well be upfront about it, so people know what to expect (that way they won?t be offended when you try to sell later on) – Again, people who just signed up are the hottest prospects on your list, and you want to cash in on that.
3. You want to hint at what is coming – make them curious, so they look forward to your next email. And let them know that you ARE going to send them more emails.

Here?s my suggested template for your 1st auto responder email (of course you would need to change it to fit your campaign):

Subject: Thank You {!firstname_fix}, Here?s Your Download Link

Hi {!firstname_fix},

Thank you for requesting the ?Report Name? Report. Here?s the download link again,
in case you missed it on the confirmation page.

=> Download “Your Report Name” Here!

And if you haven?t already, I *highly* recommend
that you sign up for “Your List or Newsletter Name Here”.
It?s my #1 recommended resource for affiliate marketers.

=> Link to “List or Newsletter here”

Thanks again {!firstname_fix}. I?ll be in touch shortly,
with a powerful tip that can easily triple your affiliate
income + an extra free ebook for you.

Have a great day,

Your Name
www.your_website.com

You Have Got Work To Do!

So that is my basic step by step guide for setting up your squeeze page and monetizing the sign up process. What you need to do now, is go through all the steps and get your whole squeeze page system set up and properly monetized. Even if you already have a live system, you probably need to go back and tweak it a bit in order to optimize and monetize (catchy phrase )

What?s Next?

I?ll get to work on the next article in this series, it will detail ?How to write a killer follow up series and how to make money from it?. Should be good, so stay tuned for that? If you are on my list you will receive and email as soon as I post the next article. If you aren?t on my list you can sign up at the top right of this page (and you can also subscribe to this blog?s RSS feed).

Got Any Questions Or Comments?

Please leave a blurb below if you have any questions about some of the steps, a comment on the article or maybe a suggestion for the coming ones. Thanks for reading – I hope you found the information useful.

Written by Soren Jordansen