Archive for the ‘Blogging Sense’ Category
by BP Guest Blogger on January 30th, 2012
You’ve heard about Search Engine Optimization, more commonly called SEO, and you know it’s important for your business’ website, but do you really understand the concept and process behind it?
In short, SEO is the process of optimizing a website by tweaking both internal and external factors to drive website traffic that originates from search engines.
Here’s a brief rundown of SEO and what takes place when a website is made search engine friendly. Read More
Categories: Blogging Resources, Blogging Sense
by Amanda DiSilvestro on January 11th, 2012
Somewhere along the way, business owners have been fed the mentality that asking for help is a bad sign. Many think that if a company needs to ask for help, it is undoubtedly in trouble. Fortunately, this is untrue in many situations; needing the help of others can mean that your company is growing. This works just as well when you think about blog help. If you run a blog, you are the owner of that blog, and if all goes well it will turn into a very profitable business. For this reason, the blogging industry is really no different than any other industry—when you need help, you need help.
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Categories: Blogging Sense, Blogging Tips
Tags: blog help, growing blog revenue, hiring a blog manager
by James Dunaway on January 9th, 2012
Building a finance blog is easy. Building a popular finance blog is a lot harder. The Internet is full of them, big and small, and while it is simpler than ever to create one, it is getting harder to be noticed in the sea of sites available – especially in a niche where many will turn first to official financial sources like the Wall Street Journal or MSNBC.
But difficult doesn’t translate into impossible, by any means. You don’t have to worry about competing in the beginning. Instead, what you have to be focused on is knowing how to generate a high traffic site by taking baby steps toward that end. That can be done in several key ways that are less complicated than you might think.
Accept That It Can Take a While
Time is the key ingredient to any blog’s success. You can’t just expect to put up a couple of posts and have everyone flock to see them. There is content to build, and there are connections to make, reblogs to receive andmarketing tactics to try. Even just leaving it there while you continue to add more content will work, but again, it all takes time.
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Categories: Blogging Sense, Blogging Tips, General
Tags: blogging, blogs, finance, finance blogs, how-to, tips
by James Dunaway on December 24th, 2011
You run a blog, and it is great. While it used to be a simple hobby, usually seen more as a personal journal on the web than anything of practical use, there are endless opportunities that come along with today’s blogging system.
All of this includes a great deal of exposure, even if you are just starting out. Changes in search engines have brought the smallest of blogs onto everyone’s radar.
Most of your concern is going to be divided between content and marketing. These two factors will dictate whether or not you are being followed by a large-enough number to make it a business. If you are a freelancer of any description, it could also be what makes all the difference between getting and not getting that dream project. It is your livelihood at stake. Read More
Categories: Blogging Sense, Blogging Tips
Tags: blogging, editorial calendar
by Jonathan Bailey on November 30th, 2011
I’ll admit it. I’m not much of a sports fan. I can’t recall the last time I went to a sporting event live and the last time I watched a game of any sport all the way through on TV was about two years ago.
However, this doesn’t mean that sports don’t have a great deal to teach us about competition, cooperation and overcoming obstacles. The truth is that every match, game and event is a contest between talented competitors and the winner is determined by a variety of factors, many of which apply equally well to our every day struggles.
In that way, sports actually are a microcosm for life itself and there’s a lot we can learn from it. However, that doesn’t mean that all of the lessons are straightforward or even pleasant. After all, sports in real life are nothing like sports movies.
So what are those lessons? Here are five to consider as you work to grow or improve your blog. Read More
Categories: Blogging Sense
Tags: baseball, blogging, football, Lessons, losing, soccer, sports, tennis, winning
by Jonathan Bailey on November 23rd, 2011
Blogging is an inherently social activity, just one that happens to be done with millions of other people all across the globe.
As with any social activity, there are social norms that develop and pertain to the way that bloggers interact with one another. These aren’t necessarily laws (though there is some relationship when you look at copyright) but they are general guidelines to help ensure that bloggers don’t needlessly injure one another and work together for the betterment of the larger community.
What exactly those standards are is up for debate. Often times, what one sees as the norm will depend as much on other factors as it does their role as a blogger. But still, there are a few generally-agreed upon norms out there, but they also happen to be very easy boundaries to cross at times.
So what are some missteps you might be making in your interactions with other bloggers? Here are five of the more common ones. Read More
Categories: Blogging Sense
Tags: anchor text, blogging, Comments, faux pas, Links, pingbacks, seo, social, trackbacks
by Jonathan Bailey on November 16th, 2011
Last week, we talked about why advertising sucks as a business model for the majority of bloggers. Fundamentally, it came down to a numbers game, unless you have a site that targets ultra-high-paying keywords or an extremely large audience, you’re unlikely to ever see a check.
However, that raises a tough question: What business models can work for a small-to-medium sized blog?
There are actually many that can work, they just aren’t as easy as slapping a bunch of Adsense ads on your site and calling it a day. In order to make money from your visitors, you need to be prepared to extract more value from them and that’s going to mean putting in more effort.
But that doesn’t mean it’s difficult or even time-consuming, just that you have to take an extra step or two to make it happen.
That being said, here are 5 business models for bloggers that have a lot better potential for revenue than basic advertising. Read More
Categories: Blogging Sense
by Jonathan Bailey on November 9th, 2011
It’s the golden road for bloggers, it’s how every great writer is supposed to make his millions (or at least thousands) off the Web. You start up an awesome blog, write great content, build a good audience, slap up a few Adsense ads and let the money come rolling in.
While it’s a system that works great for some bloggers, for a vast majority it’s a road to nowhere. A select few get rich, a few more get some spending money and the majority never even see a check.
For most blogs, advertising is a terrible business model. For them, it doesn’t work, it can’t work and it never will work. It’s that simple.
I learned this the hard way myself years ago and I cringe as I was other bloggers go down the same path, usually falling flat on their face.
Why is advertising such a terrible business model? The reasons are painfully obvious when one takes the time to look for them, but few, blinded by the promise of easy money, see the reasons until they’re staring at their paltry earnings report.
Still, for those who want to know why this is a bitter truth, I’ve outlined five reasons below. Read More
Categories: Blogging Sense
Tags: ad network, adsense, Advertising, adwords, business models, google
by Jonathan Bailey on November 2nd, 2011
Your blog can have the best design imaginable, great content, good inbound links and even great traffic but still do almost no good whatsoever. No matter how great your site is, all of your work can go to waste if you don’t have a way to convert those visitors into something that is useful to you and your goals, whatever they may be.
Whether you want them to come back later, tell their friends about your site or even become a customer, a visitor that reads your content and leaves does little more than move your hit counter. While that can be somewhat useful if you’re selling ad space, an engaged visitor is much more valuable in every way, no matter how trivial that interaction is.
That’s why your site needs a good call to action, something to tell your visitors what you want them do to help you and your site. This is a crucial step that haunted attraction websites, generally, do very well but blogs do not .
If your site is missing a clear, concise call to action it’s time to review what you want from your visitors and, more importantly, how you can ask for it. Failure to do so is not only limiting your site’s growth, but likely costing new fans, customers or subscribers every single day. Read More
Categories: Blogging Sense
by Jonathan Bailey on October 26th, 2011
Halloween is less than a week away and it’s officially crunch time for all things horror-related. If you celebrate Halloween, there’s a good chance that you are either looking to or already have checked out a haunted attraction in your area.
But while haunted houses and other haunted attractions can be a good and scary time, they’re also businesses. Like most businesses, they need to have a Web presence to promote themselves, pass out critical information and, most importantly, interact with potential customers 24/7. Also like most businesses, haunted attraction sites have a particular style associated with them.
This style is determined by a large number of factors including the nature of the business itself, especially how seasonal it is, what customers are usually looking for in a haunted attraction and the relatively limited number of design firms that work on these sites.
However, in that style there are a lot of great lessons for other webmasters, including bloggers. While this is definitely a broad generalization, as someone who has visited dozens, if not hundreds of haunted attraction websites, not counting the site for the one I operate, I see a lot of things that these sites do right and a lot of things they do wrong.
As such, here are my lessons that everyday bloggers can glean from haunted attraction websites, including both the things everyone should emulate and the mistakes to avoid. Read More
Categories: Blogging Sense
Tags: blogging, branding, design, flash, haunted attractions, haunted houses, Navigation
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