What To Blog About? Choosing Profitable Niche.

 AskHassam 004: What To Blog About? I'm Confused

It's so common to see our brothers and sisters confused about choosing the right niche for their blog. They have that energy, but it's hard for them to find out their true passion and what they are really good at. Or what is their hobby.

As we always hear, how important it is to blog about what you love as that's something you have to do for year and years to come.

So this is what I cover in this AskHassam 004 episode. Hope it helps out many.

Enjoy!

Make sure you're subscribed to the YouTube channel to get more of AskHassam episodes and the dailiy live show #HassamScope.

Watch Episode





Helpful Resources Related To Episode (Or Discussed about)





Featureso Monday, 31 August 2015
Case Study: 16 Reasons Why 'Darren Rowse' Is A ProBlogger?

 Case Study: 16 Reasons Why 'Darren Rowse' Is A ProBlogger?

First of all, this is an honor for me to write about the greatest of Bloggers around, Darren Rowse of Problogger.net. It wont be wrong if we tag him as the guru of todays Blogging arena.

Darren started out with the popular blog, that shares blogging tips. Now he also blogs at a digital photography blog.

This post isn't just meant to be a motivational source for young bloggers, but here by, i aim to highlight few of the countless skills and qualities that Darren has showed up to the world in his years of blogging experience, thus being know as a 'ProBlogger'!

Darren's Skill 1#  Approach, Aim, Goal

You would often see experienced bloggers mentioning the importance of setting up a goal for your blogging career. Darren's first move was to name his blog domain as  'Problogger.net'. It was his aim to become a problogger later in his career.
He had to try out every method, every technique that could make him achieve his sky touching aim. He could for see him self at this great position, at what he is now.

So just think for a moment, what you have planned for your blogging career. Where you want to be with it in coming years?

Case Study: 15 Reasons Why 'Darren Rowse' Is A ProBlogger?

Darren's Skill 2# Mature Approach


You would have often heard of blogging gurus talking about the 'right' approach to have. What is that 'right' approach?

The approach where you consider your blog as a business. When you think of it as this way, you are ready to invest in it. Whether your precious time, money or what ever. He knew if he had to leave out his daily job, he had to build 'something', that could play that part and fill out the gap.

He bought him self a premium template from Genesis Frame Work, got Aweber (email auto-responder service) etc. He had to take the right approach and act like pros.

Such temperament is normally missing in many people around starting off with blogging. Sitting out in home, and starting off blogging as a hobby, often makes this blogging idea, a mere hobby for their entire career (that may last few weeks).

They never get out of that shell that they have created for themselves.

Darren's Skill 3# Hard Work For 1 Year (Without considering income)


Blogging without taking income in consideration can be a huge obstacle for many. Posting articles daily for a whole long 1 year is what made Darren a great guy that he is today. The initial traffic is what all matters. After that it comes on exponentially, so building out the base line is the hardest part, that many fail to pass.

He fought that period like a Gladiator.

Case Study: 15 Reasons Why 'Darren Rowse' Is A ProBlogger?

Darren's Skill 4# Post Consistency


The magic lies behind consistent posting. How often you come by problogger.net and you find a blog not being updated daily? He never let that day come by. So what happened? People need new quality content coming by their ways, and was exactly what they got on probloggers.

Articles that Darren shared were based on true logic and shared his experience all along. He would never pass out any figures that he was not sure of him self. Thus a great guy started to get attention from the masses.

Darren's Skill 5# Tracking Out The Blog Growth


Not too often, not to less. Just the right amount of times, that could have made him know about his blog's growth, once in a while. Giving out a deep analysis of his blogs visitors, Darren could then take appropriate measures, that even further boosted the inflow of traffic.

Darren's Skill 6# Never Neglected Social Media


You would have read a lot about the power of social media and the role that it can play in a blogs growth. Darren was one of the first persons to start using Social media for his blog. May it be Facebook or Twitter, he would have shared views with his loyal readers on these platforms.

It was more of a family that was building up under the surveillance of a Problogger.

Darren's Skill 7# Proper SEO


Without search engine optimization, a blog could be nothing. With the search engine being the main source of traffic for Problogger, it was obvious for him to get friendly to search engines. The better relations he had with search engines bots, the more his chances were of becoming the Problogger.

You may want to read these few articles on necessary SEO techniques:



Darren's Skill 8# Setting Trends


Great player in every field that we know, set the trends that other follows. Darren is one of them. He likes testing out new techniques and ideas that could give a further push to his blog in his entire career. It was him who liked to show his personnel picture on his blog, 7-8 years back when it was not much of a trend.

It indeed gives a personnel touch to the blog and gives a feeling that there is a person behind all the words.

Darren's Skill 9# Started Out When The Competition Was Low


This has some impact on the success of early bloggers too. Every month, year, Internet is growing with such an immense rate, increasing out the competition in every niche. Blogging its self was a kind of new idea back then too. So it attracted visitors in that regard too.

Darren's Skill 10# Conferences And Real Time Socialization


Thinking out of the box, Darren meets up other great blogging personalities and like to be social in real life too. Attending conferences also promotes the Problogger brand its self. He gets featured on media, gets interview world wide, making him even more popular, than what he already is.

Darren's Skill 11# Regards His Guest Authors


Guest authors are of great value to a blog and can be a soul of a blog. There are thousands of guest authors willing to get featured on Probloggers platform. Darren regard them to the best he can, and that makes him even more successful.

People like to contribute to his blog more than ever. Guest posts are kept on long waiting lists.

Darren's Skill 12# He Used WordPress


This can be controversial here. But the only aspect that i believe that makes WordPress a better blogging platform than any other popular ones like Blogger, that its ability to handle the guest authors. Having an opportunity to sign up and make a guest authors account, really motivates people to get started right away.

This helped him to get even more people willing to contribute quality stuff with ProBloggers audience.

Another success!

Darren's Skill 13# Encouraged Commentators


Just like guest authors, commentators also play a vital role in a blogs success. You would notice what a great community Problogger has become to discus blogging matters. There are intellectual people giving out their views on regular basis.

Darren, on first place built such an enabling environment for commentators to grow on, plus always appreciated them.

Darren's Skill 14# Wasn't Afraid to Test Out


Testing out new stuff and to find what works best for a blogger him self, is the key. There were so many strategies tested out by Darren on Problogger, so many plugins or what not. He wasn't afraid of testing out stuff. Each time he learned and added a new better flavour to the blog.

There was an evolution going on at the Probloggers nest.

Darren's Skill 15# Gave Priority To Getting Email Subscribers


Email subscribers play a great role in building blogs long term traffic. Imagine every time a visitor gets to your blog, he reads out few articles and never come back. But when you get his email address, you get a chance to attract him back to the blog, for almost ever!

When you get thousands of email subscribers, you built up your own audience that you always have in your hand. Even Google updates like 'panda' cant really effect the blogs name. Why? Because you can still reach out to all of your visitors without depending upon the search engines to provide traffic.

Case Study: 15 Reasons Why 'Darren Rowse' Is A ProBlogger?

Darren applied every great strategy to increase his email subscribers. You may like to read 7 Reasons Why Your Email Subscribers Are Not Increasing.

Darren's Skill 16# He Built His Own Product

 Building out your own product is something really endorsed by top bloggers from ever and thats what we all should planing for in future. Darren has couple of products (eBooks, videos series, guides etc) that was one of the main pushers for Problogger brand.

So this is pretty much an overview of the reasons behind Darren Rowse success. There are countless skills that he has. Would you like to mention any of them in the comment section below? Why do you think Darren was able to become a 'problogger'.

Astalavista!


DON'T forget to share the article with your mates if you liked it. smile

Featureso Sunday, 30 August 2015
YouTube Vs Facebook Video View Criteria? 30 vs 3 Sec?

 YouTube Vs Facebook Video View Criteria? 30 vs 3 Sec?

It can get extremely confusing when it comes to decide between your ultimate video hosting platform. It's the battle between YouTube and Facebook. When I started making AskHassam episodes, it was a very tough decision to whether upload my videos to YouTube, Facebook or other relatively smaller websites like Daily Motion or Vimeo etc.

Looking forward to this, I made a short video sharing my thoughts on the issue.

Then finally, I settled with YouTube for some reasons and I'll share that with you brothers and sisters in a bit. First, lets go through how Facebook and YouTube determines their 'video view'.

YouTube Video View


So each time when a person clicks on a YouTube video, may that be on YouTube it's self or via any embed video in third party blogs/websites, YouTube video player starts counting the seconds the guy has watched the video.

Once he watches the video upto 30 seconds, that gets counted as a video view and the stats for that particular video get updated.

Facebook Video View



Though with Facebook, it's quite different. First of all, Facebook plays all the videos in a timeline automatically. Many doubt whether a person was actually interested in the video or not, even though the counter for views got incremented.

Secondly, Facebook counts a video view just after the second mark! This is 10 times less than what YouTube believes the criteria should be.

My Personal Take


It's important to understand is why video views actually matter. The more the video views, the more attention a video gets. As it's thought to be.

Do you think that 3 second duration actually portrays a person watching a video that might be a 10 min log if not more? Not that 30 seconds does, BUT it still displays that the user tried watching the video and loosed his interest on the way.

With Facebook, more video views obviously attracts advertisers and gives confidence to the publishers and video makers.

There are few doubts about the credibility of the video views on Facebook? A video playing automatically, and for just 3 seconds get's counted as a video view. Does that show that the viewer actually had interest in the video? Will the video convert well?

Imagine you have 10,000 video views on Facebook and most of them were auto plays on time lines. This means, that you get near to no conversion for your goal. With conversion, I mean with every video, you could related an aim. Some marketers like to take traffic to their websites via Facebook videos.

They could either ask the viewers to follow them on other social media profiles. Or they could ask them to subscribe to their newsletter. Or just buy a product!

The Point


The point is, that videos on YouTube have a bit more edge for 2 reasons,

1- The user intentionally clicks on the video that he/she feels interesting. This could bump up the conversion rates.

2- The videos with more views on YouTube actually shows that people watched the videos for sure! Unlike on Facebook where an auto play. 3 seconds attention span is fairly less!.

3- For people who post more of searchable content, they could go for YouTube as it's still a better video search engine. People hardly search for videos on Facebook as of yet. But for viral video creators who rely on social shares, I think Facebook is a pretty good choice for them.

My Decision


Looking forward to this, as I create more informative AskHassam videos that feature your questions mostly, these could be search on YouTube by tons of other people. SO looking forward to this I decided to stick with YouTube even though YouTube is banned in Pakistan by the authorities.

What do you think?


Let me know what you think about this? Is Facebook's criteria of 3 seconds video view okeh? How could one justify a view in your opinion?

Looking forward to your thoughts brothers and sisters!

You can also read:

Featureso Saturday, 29 August 2015
11 SEO Strategies, Backlinking - Is It Even Still Important?


AskHassam 003: 11 SEO Strategies, Backlinking - Is It Even Still Important?

Resources Discussed In The Episode

  • Brian Dean from Backlinko advices 
Below posts are not discuses in the video though they are useful resources you guys can consult.



What The Video Is About?


AskHassam 003 Discusses 11 techniques that you can implement right away to optimize your blog posts for search engines. Many of us know couple of these though you can check out for your self and see if there is any that you're yet to implement.

I'm personally not applying one of these that I talk about in the video and need to think over it too InshaAllah.

Do let me know if you brothers and sisters have any questions regarding these techniques. Post them out in the comments below.

Make Sure You're Subscribed


Also, make sure that you're subscribed to my YouTube channel where I document my daily life and publish these AskHassam videos. :)

Enjoy!


You can also check out the previous AskHassam episodes:

AskHassam 001: How To Increase Google AdSense CPC (Cost Per Click)?
AskHassam 002: How to Rank Your Blog Post High in Google to Drive the Most Traffic?

Featureso Friday, 28 August 2015
Chasing The Dreams - Laser Focus [Video]


chasing the dreams working hard bloggignehow

Hey brothers and sisters, a new video is up on the YouTube channel. I've pledged that I'll be publishing at least one video for you guys daily. They would be daily back stage footage of BloggingeHow and how I live up my life and focus on the tasks at hand.

And the next day it would be a AskHassam videocast featuring your questions in it.

How To Leave you questions?


If you have any questions that you want me to cover in my upcoming videos, make sure you let me know via comments, emails or on my social profiles with a hashtag #AskHassam. I'll be checking the tag frequently to check out your questions InshaAllah.

You may ask any blogging related questions or anything personal about my life. Would love to get back to them.

So make sure you're subscribed to the  YouTube channel.

In today video, I go through my daily routine, progressed in my university tasks, joined the gym and shot and edited out a video for you guys!

It was a tough day! Though the satisfaction it gave was priceless! Hope this motivates you guys to stay consistent and have a laser focus on your goals.

Enjoy the video<3
 


Featureso Wednesday, 26 August 2015
How To Add Multiple Author Bio Byline To Blogger


If you're running a multiple author blog on Blogger where you have a set number of authors, you can display a cute little Author Byline with profile image, name, short description and twitter follower button.

It's great to have such a short byline as the reader feels more attached to the content and engages far better. The widget can be used for multiple authors on your blog, though you have to add the details to the code manually.

Follow the simple steps below to add author bio byline below blogger post title.

Step #1 Add Your Author Details To The Code Bellow


Copy the following code to any text editor of your choice and replace the following tags as per your blog.

<b:if cond='data:post.author == &quot;First Author Name&quot;'>

<div class='sharetitle by-line by-line-inline'>
<a class='by-line-author-img' data-component='byLineDefault' data-ordinal='1' data-source='byLineDefault' data-type='authorId' href='First Author Profile Link'>
<img height='80' src='First Author Image Link' style='display:block;' width='85'/>
</a>
<div class='by-line-info' itemprop='author' itemscope='' itemtype='http://schema.org/Person'>
<a class='muted' data-component='byLineDefault' data-ordinal='1' data-source='byLineDefault' data-type='authorName' href='First Author Profile Link' rel='author'>
<div class='heading' itemprop='name'>By First Author Name</div>
</a>
<a class='muted' data-component='byLineDefault' data-ordinal='1' data-source='byLineDefault' data-type='authorSite' href='First Author Profile Link'>
<div class='site-expert'> First Author Description (e.g Founder BloggingeHow) </div>
  <br/>

<a class='twitter-follow-button' data-show-count='false' data-size='medium' href='https://twitter.com/TwitterUserName'>Follow @TwitterUserName</a>
<script>!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=&quot;//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js&quot;;fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,&quot;script&quot;,&quot;twitter-wjs&quot;);</script>

</a>
</div>
</div>
</b:if>


<style>

 .site-expert{font-size:12px;}

.by-line {
    margin-bottom: 13px;
    margin-top: 4px;
}
.by-line .heading {
    margin: 0;
}
.by-line.by-line-inline .by-line-info {
    display: inline-block;
    vertical-align: top;
}
.by-line.by-line-inline .by-line-author-img {
    margin-right: 11px;
}
.by-line.by-line-stacked .by-line-author-img {
    margin-bottom: 14px;
}
.by-line.by-line-guestauthor {
    color: #989898;
    font-size: 15px;
    padding-top: 5px;
}
.by-line-author-img {
    border-radius: 100%;
    display: inline-block;
    margin-top: -0.38em;
    overflow: hidden;
    vertical-align: top;
}
.by-line-info {
    font-size: 15px;
    line-height: 17px;
}
.by-line-info a {
    display: block;
}

a.muted, a.muted:hover {
    color: #989898;
text-decoration:none;
}  </style>

Customization:


Now simply replace all the colored tags as per their description. You'd have to add the following details:

1- First Author Name
2- First Author Profile Link
3- First Author Image Link
4- First Author Description (e.g Founder BloggingeHow)
5- TwitterUserName

How To Add For Multiple Authors?


To implement it for more authors, simply paste more code for alternate authors as below:

<b:if cond='data:post.author == &quot;Author Name&quot;'>

<div class='sharetitle by-line by-line-inline'>
<a class='by-line-author-img' data-component='byLineDefault' data-ordinal='1' data-source='byLineDefault' data-type='authorId' href='Author Profile Link'>
<img height='80' src='Author Image Link' style='display:block;' width='85'/>
</a>
<div class='by-line-info' itemprop='author' itemscope='' itemtype='http://schema.org/Person'>
<a class='muted' data-component='byLineDefault' data-ordinal='1' data-source='byLineDefault' data-type='authorName' href='Author Profile Link' rel='author'>
<div class='heading' itemprop='name'>By Author Name</div>
</a>
<a class='muted' data-component='byLineDefault' data-ordinal='1' data-source='byLineDefault' data-type='authorSite' href='Author Profile Link'>
<div class='site-expert'> Author Description (e.g Founder BloggingeHow) </div>
  <br/>

<a class='twitter-follow-button' data-show-count='false' data-size='medium' href='https://twitter.com/TwitterUserName'>Follow @yourusername</a>
<script>!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=&quot;//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js&quot;;fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,&quot;script&quot;,&quot;twitter-wjs&quot;);</script>

</a>
</div>
</div>
</b:if>


Step #2 Add The Final Code To Blogger


Now to add the code to Blogger, navigate to Blogger Dashboard >> Edit HTML and search for the following code:

<div class='post-header-line-1'/>

Finally, now paste the code beneath the one you found above. Hit save and Enjoy!

I hope the widget would give a refreshing look to your blog. Stay blessed.

Featureso
How To Create an Android Application For Your Blog [For Free]

How To Create an Android Application For Your Blog [For Free]

Creating stunning looking and professional Android application for your blogs couldn't be easier than this after exploring a free tool that I'm about to share. AppYet allows you to setup everything for your new app, ranging from application's logos, cover photos, design modules.

I recently shared BloggingeHow's new Android application, which was built for free from AppYet.com. All you have to do is to signup with them and make few settings like your blog's feed address and various modules that you wish to set in your Android app.

Lets have an in depth look into it.

Step #1 Signup With AppYet


Once you're sign up, you would then be asked to enter your application's name. This can be your blog's name. Also you can set other minor details like app version etc. Package name is a unique kind of address that differentiates your app with thousands of other apps on PlayStore.

You can set it to be: com.yourname.yourappname OR com.yourappname 

Package name is usually the reverse of the website domain of the company.

app yet

 You can choose blank template and start creating modules from scratch or use an existing one that has all the major and important modules that you would need in your app. The pre made template has feeds from popular websites like Elen's YouTube channel etc.

app yet icons

As shown in the image above, you can then set up your application's icon and cover photo that would show up in the side bar of the app. Just like the one in BloggingeHow's app.

slider bloggingnehow android app

Step #2 Setting up modules


On the very next tab, you can set modules. Modules are meant to set basic functionality of the app. Like you can add a module for 'recent posts', or a module for your YouTube channel.

Every module gets it's own option in list in the slider.



Above is the screenshot of the basic modules that I use for BloggingeHow app that you can use.

 Step #3 Set Settings 


Settings tab offers you the options to set 'Feed back email' and contact web address. Users could directly send you Feedback via an email with would automatically fetch the device information for you to debug any errors.

settings for appyet

Step #4 Build Your App!


Though there are couple of option to play with, like themes and adding Admob ads to your app, though you can easily build your app at these basic settings.

build android app appyet


I won't recommend you to put ads on your android app unless it has some decent user base.

Hit 'Submit to build' button. The APK file (which is the file you upload on PlayStore and users can install that on their phones) would be emailed to you.

You can then publish your Android app on Playstore if you have a developer account, with costs only 25$ as a one time fee.

Hope this was helpful. I love how internet has made such valuable tools for free so that publishers could focus more on the actual content publishing side.

You can also check out BloggingeHow's Android app on your smartphone:

Featureso Tuesday, 25 August 2015
24 Smart Ways To Make Money With Your Blog


24 Smart Ways To Make Money With Your Blog

I know why are you here to read this post. You are a hard working blogger who tried every single blogging tip online to increase your blog traffic and finally so that you could make money out of it. Right? Making money with your blog is one of the biggest aims of any blogger apart from the passion to pursue this particular field.

Today, looking forward to this, i complied all the major (if not all) smart ways so that you can make money with your blog. Its pretty common to see our fellow bloggers posting day and night but still are not able to work out their earning by utilizing their blog's traffic.

Before we start off, i guess it would be a wise approach to mention few great posts that refer to increase your blog's traffic so that you could later make huge sums of money and proving your social circle wrong.

You may like to read:




Some tips to increase blog traffic:



#1 PPC Advertising Networks


PPC (pay-per-click) advertising options are pretty amazing and widely used way to monetize a blog. The whole idea basically revolves around displaying certain ads on your blog and in return you get paid each time a person clicks on the ad displayed on your blog.

Now the question arises that who actually displays ads on your blog? You in fact, as a blogger, sign ups with certain popular PPC Advertising networks like Google AdSense or Yahoo Publisher Networks (YPN). Once your account is created, you can then create certain Ad Units from their dashboard panels and then paste the code on your blog.

You may like to read:


pay per click ads


After a few minutes, once the code is processed, the ads tend to show up at the spot where you pasted the code (say sidebar). Now, the type of ads are in your control. In case of Google AdSense, you could choose between Image only ads/ Text ads or Image+text ads.

What Happens At The Back End?


Different advertisers tend to sign up with Google AdWords. A certain advertisers would submit their Ad units to Google. They would choose certain keywords to target their Ads in a certain niche. So, bidding basically takes place at back end and when a certain advertisers wins the bid for a certain ad spot on your blog, his ads would then be displayed at your sidebar.

You may like to read:


google adsense bidding

How Much Do You Get Paid For Each Click?


Now this is a pretty common question that many newbies tend to have in their mind. There is no fixed set of rate for each click for any PPC program. The amount you get paid through the click depends upon the bid and the type of ads (text/ image etc) that get displayed on your blog.

There is a huge variation on the cost per click. Certain blog tend to get as high as 100$ per click! BUT thats too rare. Normally you would see your self getting 0.5 to 1 $ at most.

adsense income


The key to make money through this factor (PPC Ads) is the amount of traffic you get and the type of niche you lie in. There are certain niche that would hardly get any clicks. The reason lies in the type of visitors that you get. 

If the visitors are high tech people, who knows much about online world, then they would surely know about the actual content and the ads on your blog and thus would surely not click on them.

Popular CPC Advertising Options:



#2 Direct Banner Ads

Direct advertising methods is another one of the most popular ways to monetize your blog once it has a decent flow of traffic. Anything above 1000 visitors per day can be easily called a decent audience. Though there is no set rule obviously but i added that figure to give you a general idea (a rough one) of what one can call a decent traffic to a blog/website.

So, direct advertisement is a method where bloggers make out their own 'Advertise' page on their blog and showcase their blog's traffic, different set of metrics like Alexa etc.

banner advertisement


The plus point with selling Ad Spots directly to the advertisement parties is the fact that you tend to cut down the middle man cost. With all those PPC of CPM networks or even BuySellAds, that is a direct advertisement company that works as a middle man to let you sell your ad spots, your overall earning get low as these companies take down their own share.

With you selling ad banners directly (through your Advertise Us page), the entire game is between you and the advertisers.

You may like

What Are The Popular Ad Banners Dimensions?


Normally, leader board AdSpot (728x90 px), Rectangle (250x250 px) or Large Rectangle (300x250 px), Small Horizontal banner (468x60 px), Square (125x125 px) works the best.

It is always a good idea to use these standard dimensions for your ad spots as that would help you attract more advertisers (as advertisers have already made up ads for those standard dimensions normally for their advertisement campaigns).

#3 CPM (Cost Per Mille) Advertisement

As the name suggest, Cost Per Mille is another advertisement option (very popular with the high traffic blogs circle), depends upon the cost that you would set per 1000 impressions (page views). Say you would set 5$ CPM.

That means that you would charge your advertiser 5$ per 1000 impressions that your AdSpot gets. Note its important to highlight here that CPM varies with the Ad positioning. The ads that appear above the fold tends to enjoy high CPM rates while the ones in the footer of below post, has pretty low CPM.

cost per millie ads


There is a huge variation between the price that you need to ask for your blog's per 1000 impressions. That totally depends upon your blog's niche, the Ad Spot size and its placement. Anything in the header would get the maximum impressions so thus you have the full right to ask for maximum CPM from the advertisers.

Popular CPM Advertising Options:


#4 Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is considered to be the king income source for bloggers in today's online arena. Most of the top blogger (probloggers) who are earning 6 figure + per year are for sure working out their ways with affiliate marketing world.

Before we move on, you may like to read:

affiliate marketing model

What is Affiliate Marketing In General?

Say you build a product of your own. For example an ebook. Now you wish to sell it online but you are not supported with just enough funds for advertisement to make your eBook reach out to the world. What could you possibly do?

Most of the product owners then move towards affiliate marketing. They would offer people a certain commission over the sales of the eBook. You would make couple of banners for the eBook publicity. Then your affiliates would promote your eBook over their blogs/websites and link back to the sales page (or any other sales processing system).

Once the visitor buys an eBook through your affiliates, they would get a certain percentage of commission of the total sale make. The rest goes to you :)

Thats a pretty healthy system of promoting your product and works like a charm. People even offer 70+% commission to their affiliates. Now you could imagine what sort of wonders could such product promotion could play.


How Could You Do Affiliate Marketing?


To be brief, as i am just listing general money making ways from blog here in this post, there are few different strategies when affiliate marketing is concerned.

You could either promote products from standalone companies. Like promoting a hosting service (hostgator etc) on your blog, or you could promote a certain eBook by the top bloggers.

Apart from that, you could join the affiliate market places and choose the products from there. Personally i would say this works great as these companies have build reputation for them selves over the years and have a proper system of checkout, records, stats etc and would really help you in boosting your overall sales.


Popular Affiliate Market Places:


#5 Text Link Based Ads

Text link ads is a tricky one. The advertisers basically pay you to add certain text links within your blog post and you need to make sure that you provide them with a dofollow backlink. Obviously thats what they are paying for (traffic + some page rank flow).

in text ads

How Could This Effect Your Google Rankings?


Its now a solid fact that the more you would link to low quality sites with irrelevant content to your site, it would surely effect your blog's search engine rankings. So it would work great if only you could make sure that you link to a site that is both high quality plus relevant to your niche.

Other wise its just like getting paid to destroy your own empire.

#6 Sponsored Reviews

Sponsored Reviews are pretty high paying methods to make money with your blog for sure. Though it depends upon the place where your blog stands in terms of both popularity, traffic, stats/metrics etc but you could still make few bugs in any case.

How Sponsored Reviews Works?


You basically, as a blogger, promote certain products by writing a blog post of around 200-400 words (depends upon the terms and conditions of the advertiser) and get paid in return. The advertiser in return gets dofollow backlink to their product site, plus traffic in general.

sponsored reviews


Another way to earn money through sponsored reviews is without a blog where you write direct reviews for the company as (kind of) testimonials. But as its out of topic, so i wont go in that subject. Its pretty fun though :)

Popular Sponsored Review Sites:


#7 Monetization Widgets

Monetizing widgets are basically like those Amazon affiliate widgets where you just need to install them on your blog (say sidebar) and they would tend to you different sort of ads. There are different types of monetization widgets like the ones who would show PPC ads, Affiliate ads etc.

But the general idea remains the same that its a widget that displays ads (image or text links) within them and you get paid accordingly.



Popular Monetization Widgets Sources:


#8 Finding Sponsors For Different Sections Of Blog

This revenue stream works well on popular blogs that have huge traffic. The reason being that the advertiser tends to limit their advertising campaign to a specific portion of your blog and thus the audience likewise narrows down.

Say you ask advertisers to sponsor your interview section of your blog, or say if you run a blog based on dog's care, so you might want to ask for a sponsorship for your dog's food section. Thats the general idea.

So you would promote the advertisers site/product etc on that particular section (only on that page/label/category of your blog).

You could ask for sponsors directly through your blog's Advertise Us section as another source of advertisement apart from the generic ad banners etc.


#9 Monetize Your Blog's RSS Feed


As you apply ads on your blog, the same way you could monetize your blog's RSS feeds. The most popular combination is of applying Google AdSense on Feedburner feeds. You could also sell ad spots directly for your blog's feed in case you use a feed burning tool that lets you edit your feed in such a way.



Popular Feed/Monetization Options:


    #10 Earning Via Private Forums


    Another possibility for you to earn through your blog is via a private forum. Say your blog gets popular enough that gets huge traffic and you were able to build a community over a period of time. Then it would be the right time to open up a private forum with a certain member ship fee.

    For the forum to get working, you obviously need to provide something unique to the members that isn't available to the generic visitors of your blog. That can be some secret techniques, you personnel experience to something that you normally don't share on blog in general or that can be anything.

    seo hat forum


    A good example would be Problogger.com (forum) by Darren Rowse of Problogger.net. Its a paid forum (not sure about the membership fee though). Likewise we have SEOBlack hat who charge around 100$ per member monthly. Their forum is for sure high quality and satisfies the members.

    Below are the popular forum building tools/software that you can use to start a new one for you blog.

     

    #11  Exclusive Offers/ Content


    You could start an exclusive offers on your blog where you could give a certain portion of the products for free and then charge on after a certain threshold. Say make out your own product. You can make that available for free for a certain period of time/of use age limit and then charge a certain free from the users.

    #12 Introducing Job Boards


    You could introduce Job boards on your blog (once it gets enough traffic, popularity). People could post jobs there and you could charge them in return for the listing. The cost totally depends upon you but in general, people ask for around 10-100 $ per listing.

    job boards


    Its getting pretty common to see popular bloggers to open up their own job boards. Take an example of Problogger.net.

    Depends upon the popularity of your blog.

    Popular Jobboards Making Software/Programs:

    #13 Paid Surveys / Polls


    There are sites that would pay you to run surveys on your site/blog. That can be polls too. In general they would take use of the hard earned traffic that you have built over the years and would pay you to judge your audience on a certain scale.

    These programs normally pay as per CPM (Cost per Mille) style. So the more your traffic is, the more your worth.


    Below is a popular Paid to Survey/Polls program:

     

    #14  Selling/Renting An Internal High Page Rank/ High Traffic Page

      This is another interesting way to monetize (make money) with your blog. Say one of your internal blog page has a high page rank/traffic, and you wish to rent it out. So the advertiser would get benefited from either the high page rank (say >6, random).

      This model is pretty well utilized by milliondollarwiki. Though, obviously this monetization model wont work for small blogs with low page ranks and traffic. You got to provide some value to the advertiser.

      #15 Ask For Donation smile


      This is another way to make money out of your blog. But, its obviously not a big player. You could put a donation box/button beneath your each blog post and ask people to throw in some bugs smile. Your relation with your audience is pretty important in this regard.

      Though this is a fun model for making money with a blog, i wont say that one could rely on it (obviously).


      #16 Featuring Advertisers Posts


      You could feature your advertisers post/articles that would link back to their sites. This would transfer a huge bunch of traffic to the advertisers site. Though this monetization model isn't quite popular, but still used on sites like Techmeme.com.

      Notice their right side section that displays sponsored posts.


      #17 Popup Ads


      NOT a fan of them! You could implement popup ads on your blog if you're in need of some instant cash through your blog. The reason being that though popup ads have a high CTR (click through rate), thus would make quite a bit of money on short term basis, on long term, they would ruin your traffic and fan following.

      popup advertisment


      We all know how irritating these popup ads are.

      Below are few popular Popup Ad networks:


      #18 In-Text Advertisement


      In-text advertisement is basically showing up ads in the form of text-links. When you signup with certain in-text advertisement companies, you then need to place their code in your blog template.

      Then certain keywords (words) get highlighted in your blog posts automatically. This in-text ads are usually double-underlined (unlike single underlined links), showing that they are ads. Though you can set them to single dotted underlined too (through the settings).

      infolinks ads bubble


      This advertisement model works on PPC (Pay Per Click), that whenever someone clicks on the those in-text ads, you get paid a certain sum of money. The draw back of such advertisement is that they are extremely low paying (wont pay you more than 0.5$, and in most case much lower than that).

      The good side is that their CTR is high so the net income depends.

      Popular In-text Advertisement Options:


      #19 Selling Your Blog


      Now, interestingly, you could sell your blog and make a chunk of money. Some people tend to be the part of such a money making model. They work on couple of blogs to a point that they start getting some traffic and earns a bit of money too.

      Then they would sell the blog at a low cost (still greater than 1000$ in most cases). They keep on repeating the same. But to make sure that your blog gets sold (and with a good payback), you need to grow it up a point where it starts earning some amount per month.

      Other wise its a useless tool for the buyer.

      how to sell a blog


      Some Popular Market Places To Sell Your Blog:

      #20 Audio Advertisement (CPP)


      Cost-Per-Play advertisement model was introduced by netaudioads.  You basically put a certain audio ad on your blog. Each time a visitor gets to your blog, the audio ad (around 5 seconds long) would play (and would be unstoppable), and at the end, the reader would get redirected to your blog (from the audio ad).

      Though this advertisement model can be high paying as it tends to provide 100% conversion, still it can be hell annoying, thus dropping your overall traffic and fan engagement.

      audio ads

      #21 Selling An eBook


      You could sell an eBook on your blog. That would not only increase your subscriber base, plus is pretty effective in terms of making big money. People often build up a blog entirely around their eBook topic and promote it every where.

      The ultimate call to action that they look for is to sell the eBook on the blog. You could promote the similar topics on the blog (via blog posts) that would encourage your audience to buy the eBook at the end of the day,
      how to sell an eBook

      #22 Sponsored Tweets


      Once you have build a huge fan following on social media via your blog, specially on Twitter, you can then use that subscriber base to send sponsored tweets. Depending upon the number of twitter followers your have, you could then charge accordingly.

      I have noticed people asking for 50-100$ for around 10,000 Twitter followers that they have. It can vary a lot though. You could use BuySellAds as a middle man company or directly use this money making model via your advertise us page.

      sponsored tweets

      #23 Sponsored Email


      Same as with Twitter followers, people (bloggers) who have built huge email lists can play wonders with this model for making money with your blog. Once you have thousands of email subscribers on your behalf, you can then earn a huge sum of money for promoting certain products to the email list, or send out a advertiser specific content to your subscribers.

      For that purpose, you may wish to use an auto-responder service like aWeber to make your work smooth.

      #24 Blog Hard Cover


      Once you are an established blogger who have earned a name for his self in the blogosphere, you could then convert your blog (blog posts) into a real life hard book. There are couple of tools available online that charge you some bucks and in return convert your blog into an awesome looking hard book featuring all of your blog posts.

      Some of those tools include:


      Finally?


      I hope this post helped you out in making mind for your future monetization plans through your blog. You could point out some other effective ways to make money with a blog in the comments below, would love to hear them.

      ALSO, kindly share this post on Facebook, Twitter. That would mean a lot to me :)

      Till the next post, Peace out!

      Featureso Monday, 24 August 2015
      Launching BloggingeHow's Android Application [Download Now]


      bloggingehow android application

      Finally! It's out. How often it has happened that our brothers have asked me to put on a RSS button on the blog so that they could access BloggingeHow's RSS feed and get to read the latest posts on their RSS readers.

      With this latest design update, I made sure that there was a RSS button available. What could be even better when you could reach out to the blog's latest posts right on your Android device.


      https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hassam.bloggingehow


       Design Aspect



      bloggingehow android appbloggingehow android app

      bloggingehow android app

      bloggingehow android app

      bloggingehow android app

      Your Feedback


      Brothers and sisters, do let me know how's your experience with the new app. There is a feedback button with in the application that you can use to email me your feedback. I'd be anxiously waiting for your views and reviews.

      I would reply to every single email that I'll get InshaAllah and consider your feedback. Together we can make this thing even more refined! <3

       Thank you so much for being part of this little community where we get to learn from each other! You guys are my only motivation to keep this thing going and this is the only reason what I do every day!

      Make sure you leave your reviews and let me know what you think :)

      As always, happy blogging!

      P.S This is the basic version of the app. With your feedback, I'll InshaAllah push more updates to it to add more social media channels and other projects to it. Looking forward to your feedback :)


      https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hassam.bloggingehow

      Featureso Wednesday, 19 August 2015