How are you Going to Make Money with a Blog?

How are you Going to Make Money with a Blog?

The one thing that always seems to be floating around in a bloggers mind is how to turn their blog into something profitable.  Wouldn’t it be great if you were able to take your love of writing your blog and make a great deal of money from it?  What if you were able to turn it into something so big that you ended up living very comfortably off of your blog?

I have had this dream a dozen times.  I love my blog.  Writing is all I want to do.  I could spend hours every day on my blog and feel incredibly lucky, if I was making enough money for that to be a viable option.

A case study in sham SEO

A case study in sham SEO

How do you know when you’re not getting your money’s worth?

A couple of months ago, I was speaking with a prospect about his current web marketing, and it became clear that what he was getting from his current agency had little to no value.

Meet Mike

“Mike” had been paying his agency for months but had seen zero results. A website he’d made for himself on the side was ranking better than the business website he was paying his SEO agency to promote. Having no knowledge of web marketing or SEO himself, he was paying hundreds of dollars a month to this agency for their expertise – for nothing.

How to Write a Simple Blog Business Plan in Nine Easy Steps

Have you developed a business plan for your blog? Does your blog need a business plan? Of what relevance is a business plan to a blogger? If these are the questions running through your mind, please read on as I will provide the answer in details.

If a survey were to be carried out with respect to the topic above, it will be observed that over 85% of blogs are being run without business plans and I can also bet that as at the point of you reading this article, you don’t have one.

It is well known that one prerequisite to successfully starting and building a business is a business plan. Now if a business plan is an ingredient to business success, why can’t it also be utilized for a blog?

Writing a business plan for your blog is definitely not mandatory but if you intend to treat your blog as a business, then I will advice you put down a business plan for your blog.

Why you need a Blog business plan?

a)    Your plan will help you maintain focus

How to Google-proof Your Website in Six Steps

Are you frightened of Pandas and Penguins? If your business and website was severely affected by Google's algorithm changes in 2012, you might be. I have talked to numerous clients who have lamented how much their traffic dwindled as a direct result of those changes. Many have told me how they're scared to do anything with their website for fear of future issues, and not a few have refused to ever speak to an "SEO Expert" again.

Fortunately, there are definitely steps that a business can take to not only improve their ranking within Google search, but also avoid potential issues with the next major algorithm change that Google will inevitably release.

1. Follow The Rules

Perhaps this goes without saying, but any attempt by a business to "outsmart" Google should be considered ridiculous. Do not do anything with your website that you even think, maybe, just might, be contrary to what Google wants you to do. A good rule of thumb for the average business owner might be, if you're thinking about Search Engines instead of Customers with whatever it is you're doing, do your homework first. There certainly are optimization techniques that can and should be implemented, that are perfectly acceptable. For that, you're going to want to talk to a reputable internet marketing agency (I will blog about how to identify a great SEO company another time).

If you're interested in learning for yourself, start by reading some of our Search Engine Optimization articles here, and then head over to SearchEngineLand.com, where Danny Sullivan has put together an amazing team of writers. SearchEngineWatch.com is another resource for information that I would recommend without question.

2. Do Not Buy Links

Some time ago, Google thought it would be a good idea to monitor how many times other websites chose to create a link to your website. These are called backlinks, and the rationale was that if a website was willing to link to you, they must like or support you in some way, so Google considered that a vote of confidence. The more links you had, the better your site must be, right?