A blog sales funnel is a carefully thought out system which leads visitors through your website and converts them from visitors (leads), to subscribers, to prospects, to customers (the ultimate goal) and then on up the value chain.

Why a funnel?

The concept of a funnel is that the top is the widest part. Here you’ll use a blend of marketing strategies to entice, or “sweep”, as many people to your site or blog as possible. As you will only convert a certain percentage of visitors (leads) into subscribers (or prospects) the funnel narrows as you qualify your potential customers.

A typical blog sales funnel would start with visitors opt-ing in to your list in exchange for a free gift. Then, when they feel comfortable that you deliver good quality content that meets their needs, they may buy a low priced product or sign up for a 30-day trial. As the relationship develops, a certain percentage of your customers will sign up for high ticket priced items, such as a training course or coaching. As the trust builds, so does your income!

So, for example, you may have 1,000 visitors to your site, which means 100 subscribers opt-in to your email list, of which 20 or 30 become customers and, of these, 2 or 3 buy your mega training course or one to one coaching

How to create a sales funnel for your blog

The starting point for any sales funnel is to be clear on the goals for your business or blog. Are you looking to make quick money online from a niche site or are you building an authority site? Is it all about making money or do you have a bigger picture view?

For me, my goal is to build community. My efforts are focussed on building my opt-in email list and Facebook Group to at least 1,000 members and developing quality communications with my list. I do monetize my list but in a low key way and I won’t hit the monetization button any harder until I’ve earned the respect and trust of my list.

Next, make a list of the products and services you have to offer and their prices. To have an effective sales funnel you will need a mixture of free products, low and high-end products and perhaps products in different media.

Now write each of the following categories on a piece of paper and see if you can fill each one with some products and services:

• A Freebie or $1 Guide (1 or 2 page pdf or “cheatsheet”)
• $20-$49
• $100-$150
• $500-$995
• $10,000

Let’s look at some examples:

For the top of your funnel (to get people to opt-in to your email list) you need a freebie or $1 Guide. There are different trains of thought on which is better (free or “pay a minimal amount”) and I could argue both ways. The point is to offer your visitors something of value (i.e. relevant to their needs) in exchange for them giving your their email.

Other items in this category could include a free trial, 7-day e-course, or a newsletter. Pick what suits your market best and is relevant to your business. Always offer something of real value (not just some rehashed PLR product), and keep your personal brand in mind because for most of your visitors this will be their first interaction with you so you want to make a good impression.

Moving through the funnel, you need some low priced products in the $20 range such as an e-book, report, podcast or video. “How to” products are good in this price range so think about a How To book or video showcasing your expertise in your niche.

Now that you’ve converted your subscribers to customers (ta da!) you are going to move them up the value chain with higher value, higher priced items. These could include products and services such as a teleseminar series, 30 minutes of free coaching, an ebook (more in-depth than the lower priced one), or package a group of lower priced products together.

Another way to increase value is to use membership or “continuity” programs. You can use the sales funnel to start people off at the base level (maybe a free trial), and then offer a tiered membership moving from bronze at $9.99pcm to silver at $19.99pcm to gold at $999 one-off annual payment for example.

Next, look at products or services in the $500 bracket. Think about teleseminars, webinars and workshops. Also coaching, or some bespoke services you can offer.

At the bottom of the funnel (top of the value chain), come up with one service that someone will pay $10,000 for. You may not be able to imagine anyone paying you $10,000 but having an ambitious goal like this will inspire you to keep improving the products and services you offer.

I could only come up with one idea for my $10,000 level, and that is a year’s worth of coaching, twice a month, with one to one meetings every quarter. You can probably think of many others.

So, jot down all the ways you can monetize your blog or business. Think about books, videos, audios, DVD’s, training courses, membership programmes, webinars, workshops, coaching, mentoring, consulting. Also check out fellow bloggers in your niche and see how they’re monetizing their sites and which products and services they’re offering.

Now for the exciting part. Based on your traffic and your conversion rates you can calculate your potential income, or work back and see how many visitors you need to your site to meet your income goals. So, for example, if you want to make an additional $2,000 a month, and you have a range of $47 ebooks and videos, then you need to sell $2,000/$47 = 42 copies per month. Assuming a 1% conversion rate, you’ll need to generate 4,200 visitors a month to your site.

If you have a $99 product, you only need to sell 20 per month to meet your goals, or generate 2000 visitors.

So, now you’ve created a sales funnel for your blog and maybe even have a business development plan for new products and services.

All of your content and communication is now going to focus on moving customers from the low end/freebie products to the higher priced products. Think about the benefits your customers will get from each product and sell those benefits.

If you provide excellent quality content and products, and have a clear plan for your sales funnel and how to move customers through it, you’ll find maximising your monetization is rewarding, and fun.

Cassie Hicks

Women’s Way To Wealth

Cassie maintains a blog – http://www.womenswaytowealth.com/blog where she discusses different strategies and tips for creating Home Based Businesses. She enjoys writing for savvy women who want to create their own incomes while looking after their families.

At http://womenswaytowealth.com/success-kit you can sign up for a free “Home Business Success Kit”, a valuable, interactive guide to help you develop and build a home based business that will make you money for years to come.

Download a free trial of Market Samurai the product that I use to find and rank my niche sites!

As one of the most popular, user friendly and free web-based services for analytics available, GA uses JavaScript embedded into site pages to give statistical traffic information. This works differently than information you would get through other web statistics programs, such as Webalizer or AWStats, which gather information through a web server log. As a free service, GA is quite capable of providing site statistical information you can use to streamline your site.

One the other hand, unfortunately users that have JavaScript disabled in their browsers will not be included in the traffic statistics provided. Also, because it is a free service, there is limited support and the speed at which the data is gathered is somewhat delayed as opposed to real-time programs. However, there are some excellent paid services available such as Webtrends and Adobe SiteCatalyst (Omniture) if your budget will support the cost.

So assuming you are going to start and possibly stay with GA, an overview to what it includes would be condensed statistics on a dashboard that can be expanded in order to view the detailed version. This dashboard allows you to change the arrangement of the statistics, as well as add or remove any of the statistics displayed. The default setting analyzes data from the previous 30 days. However, this date range can be customized and you can do comparisons of date ranges if desired.

The report displays main categories such as:

Goals Overview - Gives full statistics that can be customized to show the results of performance goals assigned, and it allows you to map out exactly what your viewers will be doing on the site. This means on an e-commerce site for example, you can track viewers and assign values as they proceed through each step in the purchase process.

Site Usage - Site Usage is broken down into subcategories, which in turn can be clicked to show more details and information gathered within the time period specified:

- Pageviews - Shows how many pages each viewer visited.

- Visits - Shows the total amount of visits or traffic to your site.

- Page/Visit - Gives an average of the amount of pages visited by viewers.

- Average Time on Site - Tracks the average time each viewer stays on your site.

- % New Visits - Filters and gives a percentage of new viewers rather than repeat viewers in the total amount of visits.

- Bounce Rate - Shows a percentage of viewers that left your site, or “bounced,” after viewing one page. It’s important to remember there are a lot of reasons why only one page might be viewed. These reasons can include finding your site by mistake when they were searching for another page or you may have an image or file hosted that is viewed on it’s own, negating a reason for viewers to actually visit and surf through the entire site.

Traffic Sources Overview - Shows what sources are directing traffic to your site whether through search engines using keywords, from direct URL visits or through referral links.

Visitors Overview - Gives the same statistics as Site Usage and also provides data such as Absolute Unique Visitors, as well as a Technical Profile section, which gives statistics on connection speeds and specific browsers that viewers to your site are using.

Keywords - Shows both paid and non-paid keywords that viewers are using in search engines to get to your site. It shows the value of each keyword by giving the viewer information from each, showing average pages per visit, time spent on the site and conversion rates.

Content Overview - Gathers and shows statistics on the most popular pages visited on your site. It gives details on the amount of page views, unique page views, average time spent on any specific page, bounce rates showing the percentage of single page visits, exit percentages showing the percentage of exits from any given page, and $ Index which is calculated if a value has been set on any page in your Goals section.

Map Overlay - Displays a visual report giving statistics on the geographical area of each viewer. This report is clickable and will give more specific details broken down into country, city, etc.

All of the statistics above are freely accessible from Google Analytics. It is possible to fully customize them as well by setting filters to get specific information for segments of viewers. These filters are found in the Advanced Segments option. Also, using Site Overlay, you can view statistics on links viewers used to arrive to your site. In addition, there are many more statistics available that will allow you to arrive at the information and data you specifically require for your site.

Keeping in mind still that it will not provide information for users with JavaScript disabled, GA is still a great tool that can give plenty of information from generalized traffic statistics for viewers, to highly detailed information for specific viewers. By using a combination of web server log statistics and a web-based analytics program such as GA, you will get a more complete and accurate picture of viewers to your site, which will help you with determining the right strategy to gain the traffic you need for a profitable business.

Brian F. is a SEO and blogger for InMotion Hosting, a web hosting company in Los Angeles.  He often writes tutorials on how to write advanced segments in Google Analytics.  You can follow him on Twitter @BrianAFlores. 

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How Images Can Help With SEO

1. File NameHaving one of your target keywords as your photos file name is a great way to not only boost on-page seo, but it also might see you get search engine traffic through Google Images.
2. Alt TextMy currently favourite SEO plugin is Yoast’s WordPress SEO plugin that is basically like All-In-One SEO – but does a lot more. And what it does is analyse your post and rates it on a heap of different factors related to your focus keyword (so that you can fine tune your content). One of these SEO factors is having your keyword in your pictures Alt Text. The reason this is important is because it is your way to tell Google what the picture is and allows you to focus Google’s attention onto your main point.

Since images are important, we need to get our hands on some that we can use – and if you have a lot of niche sites and are producing a lot of content then buying all these images can get expensive! iStockPhotos, which is probably one of the most well know royalty free photo websites are quite expensive, with photos ranging from about $5-20+, which I am sure you would agree would add up quite quickly!

Why Can’t I Use Free Photos From The Internet?

You know what? There is absolutely nothing wrong with finding free photos and using them on the internet, AS LONG AS the website specifically says that you can use them for commercial purposes.

There are a couple of websites that have quite a lot of free photos that are also royalty free, but the problem I find is that while the quality is good, it is not great and I can never seen to find the type of photo that I am looking for.

What About Google Images?

It can be quite easy to just do a search of Google Images, find a photo that you like and copy and use it on your own website. Aside from the fact that you are stealing someone else’s property, you will also lose some of the SEO value because the same image will already be ranking in Google Images  – most likely for the same phrase as you are targeting.

It just makes sense to use royalty free photos, and I want to share with you my latest hot find when it comes to cheap royalty free photos.

Where I Buy My Royalty Free Photos

I have always been a massive fan of the Envato network. I’ve bought quite a few WordPress themes through ThemeForest, and I’ve even designed a few items and listed them for sale on GraphicsRiver, but there latest marketplace is quickly becoming my favourite:

Introducing: PhotoDune

PhotoDune is a royalty free photography marketplace that already has over 220,000 items for sale. Each item is priced based on their size and since most websites only need the ‘extra small’ or ‘small’ sized photos they will only set you back $1-2.

Here are a couple of the photos that I have recently bought for the first site in my new niche site challenge.

*Using their watermarked images as I only have single licenses – which allows me to use the photos on one site*

As you can see, the photos are vibrant and professional and from memory I paid $1 for the first one, and $2 for the second (cause I needed a larger size).

If you are looking for cheap royalty free photos for your websites then head over to PhotoDune and see what they have to offer!

Where Do You Get Your Photos?

Do you have a favourite website (either free or paid) where you get your photos from? Leave a comment below because I would love to check them out.

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First The Back Story…

In October 2010 I was getting a bit complacent with my online business and decided I needed to really ramp up my workload. To keep myself motivated I set myself a challenge to create a brand new $1000/month niche site income from brand new sites by the end of July 2011.

After a slowish start and quite the rollercoaster ride in the middle, I hit my target a month early and just this last month (July 2011) I have actually doubled it – making $2,000 in July from sites I had created since the start of the challenge.

While I will continue to maintain these websites, I have tossed up the idea of selling my two biggest earning sites from the challenge (about $1,500/month), which would result in a niche house deposit or pay for our move to Canada but soon realised that it would take too big a chunk out of my online earnings to be an option at the moment.

Which Is Why I Plan On Doing It All Again!

So I decided, that before I can consider selling these two sites (both in the same niche, so would sell together), I needed to have a couple more sites that were well on their way to taking their place in my portfolio.

This is why I am kicking myself back into overdrive and firing up a brand new niche site challenge that will hopefully see my with growing, profitable replacements by the time we pack up or lives and move to Canada for 12 months (which is March 2012).

So Whats The Challenge This Time?

I learnt a lot from my last challenge about what works and what doesn’t so I am setting some specific criteria to the challenge this time that will keep me focused and give me the best chance of achieving my goal again.

Here is what I am going to achieve:

• Create A $500/Month Niche Site Income From New Sites By March  7, 2012.
  

  Once again 8 months, but this time I have halved the target monthly income. I did this because my focus will be on building premium niche sites with a huge focus on quality over quantity. They will be build slower  than usual but with a focus on long term profit. This means that the focus will be on content before profit and while I may hit it lucky and reach my target monthly income (TMI) before March, if I do then I will just adjust my TMI higher.

• Achieved By 4 Sites Within The Same Broad Niche (Networking)
  

  A couple of things that I learnt from my last challenge was that to many sites spreads your focus to wide and also having a couple of sites in the same niche can be very beneficial for both interlinking and directing hungry visitors to more information. This is why I have limited this challenge to just 4 websites, within the same niche – and I won’t be buying any new domains until the challenge in completed.The domains were purchased earlier this week and I am currently getting the first one installed and themed up (ready for content).

• Start Building Next Site After Previous Site Is At Least 1 Month Old And Getting 100+ Search Visitors A Month

  I really struggle with working on multiple sites at one time, so when I have a couple of sites to work on, I like to spend a couple of days to a week on one site and then alternate my work onto another site (giving the first site a chance to find it’s feet in Google and just have a rest).So to make sure that each of the 4 new sites have a solid head start, I will work on one site at a time, get them ranking, begin the trickle of search engine visitors (minimum of 100/month), before I give it a chance to settle by moving on to set up my next site.

• Focused On Clickbank & Adsense For Income

  While my online income has really started to diversify between a growing number of affiliate networks, one that I have never really been able to master is Clickbank. Sure I get a $500 check from them every 3-4 months, but I’ve always had the goal in my head to see a figure like that monthly from then, so I was excited when I saw a lot of great products in their marketplace that were related the niche I was targeting.So I have decided to put a big focus on Clickbank for this challenge, but will also be adding my new best friend (Adsense) to these sites as well. 

  $500/month works out to about $17/day, so I either need a Clickbank sale a day or about 34 Adsense clicks (at 50c/click – guess). Hopefully with both networks it will make the goal a little easier.

Follow My Journey…

Over the next 8 Months, I am planning on doing regular monthly updates on traffic/income as well as hopefully sharing some juicy posts on some of the things I am learning along the way that will help you with your niche sites.

So if you want to keep up to date with what I am doing you can:

• Subscribe To StandOutBlogger By RSS
• Follow Me On Twitter
• Like StandOutBlogger On Facebook

Download a free trial of Market Samurai the product that I use to find and rank my niche sites!

Email lists and I have always had an on again off again relationships, because I am constantly getting told by the ‘gurus’ that the money is in the list – but for me, this never seemed to be true.

Today I want to take you through a mistake that I made that saw me delete an email list with almost 300 people on it, what I was doing wrong and how I went so long without realising I was making a mistake!

Let’s Start At The Beginning…

Before I started my niche site challenge, I already had quite a few blogs and a couple of niche sites, and one of the sites was getting some decent traffic (about 1-2000 visitors a month) and was making me a bit of money through Adsense – with absolutely no work.

I’d done the research well from the beginning and now had totally passive, search engine traffic and I was looking for ways to capitalise on it better.

Now the site was in the ‘Australian franchise’ niche and there were not a whole lot of affiliate products to promote, so I decided that these people are looking for a business – why not try to sell them an online business?

So I got to work creating a 7 day e-course that would take them through a different way to make money online each day.

It was great in concept, and to be honest there were a whole lot of affiliate products for me to choose from (I was using Clickbank) – but there were some fatal flaws.

I Didn’t Have A Problem Getting Subscribers!

Thanks to Popup Domination and the constant flow of search engine visitors I had a steady flow of new subscribers each day who would jump on to day 1 of my course.

In fact I was getting about 5 subscribers each day for the month or so that I ran the popup and I was getting excited because I was sure that my e-course was going to convert into some niche commissions.

… But It Didn’t!

I was checking my Clickbank account on a daily basis and maybe see 1 click each day generated from the autoresponder sequence.

There I was with a list of 270 subscribers that were not converting so I decided enough was enough and turned the popup off and just let it make money with Adsense each month.

Fast Forward 6 Months…

So here we are back to about a week ago and I am looking at a couple of my sites that are doing quite well with traffic and so I decided to give list building another go. I logged into my Aweber account, set up two new lists and put them to work on my niche sites (no free ebooks or courses, just ‘signup for updates’).

One of my lists started converting like crazy (8-15 subscribers a day, from just a sidebar opt-in) and so I created a couple of emails for the start of an autoresponder series and today I decided I wanted to see how the emails were being received.

The problem was that although I knew how to check my click through rate (CTR) on a broadcast email, I had no idea to check up on the individual emails in a follow-up series – so I did some digging in Google and found this post on Awebers Blog. So I followed its instructions into the ‘Reports’ tab in Aweber, and was confronted with this graph:

It may look a little confusing so let me break it down:

• The List Has 84 People On It
• The First Follow Up Message Has Been Opened 64 times and Click 33 times
• The Second Follow Up Message Has Been Opened 36 times and Click 35 times

There is a lot more you can read into that graph, but for me, it means I’m getting a decent open and click through rate.

We will come back to this email list for some more stats, but I want to jump back to the first list that I have up on and show you the same chart for that list (and see if you can work out the problem!)

Graph For Franchise Site Follow Up Sequence:

The last line of the graph says it all, but I never took the time to check my stats.

• 2,036 Emails Sent
• 177 Opens
• 45 Clicks

And That It Why It Wasn’t Making Me Money!

Where Did I Go Wrong?

To be honest I went wrong in quite a few different areas (especially even considering a list in the ‘make money online’ niche), but the one thing I did that instantly set me up for failure was:

I was focused on selling instead of educating!

If you looked at the ways I set up the course, each email was focused on selling people a product that they had to pay for.

I know that I personally never open these emails – so I don’t know why I expected other people too.

People don’t want to feel used, that they are just another number that will hopefully result in someone making some money. They sign up for an email list because they want information – they want to learn. So your job as a list owner is to feed and nurture their knowledge increasing journey.

This is something I took into account with this latest list, where my follow up emails structure is:

• Focus On Content
• Link To Related/Popular Articles On Your Site
• Use HTML Emails (Pretty Looking – I Use ThemeForest For Email Templates)
• Include Advertisements (Both Text & Image – Linking To Affiliate Programs)

Let’s Take A Look At The Click Breakdown For One Of My Follow Up Emails

Here is a graph for the second follow up message that has been opened 36 times and clicked 35 times:

That is right, I have 9 separate links in this email!

My goal was 3 fold:

• Keep people learning with the content of my email
• Link them back to articles on my site (more Adsense income)
• Have them click on the advertisements and hopefully buy something.

But Isn’t My Focus To Make Money?

A lot of you will probably look at the above pie chart and the fact that the majority of my clicks are going back to articles on my site and start wondering about leakage – because most of us are taught that we need to funnel our list into clicking on our affiliate links. BUT, I see it a different way.

• No Use Constantly Pitching Products If You Are Going To Burn Your List After The First Couple Of Emails
• Why Not Focus On Educating And Let The Reader Decide When They Are Ready To Purchase Anything (affiliate link)

Do this and you will not only have a much more responsive email list, but you will also make a lot more money in the long run – because your subscribers will hang around.

So after all that, I went back to my initial list and just deleted the whole thing from my Aweber account, because there is no use paying for subscribers who are not reading your emails.

What Have You Learn’t From Your Email Lists?

Enough about me and my sites. I’d love to hear some of your stories about email lists and the things that you have learnt (both good and bad).

I personally use Aweber for my email lists, and I used their on board reports to generate the above graphs.

If you are looking for a company to handle your email lists then I can highly recommend them, and if you sign up, they will only charge you $1 for your first month – which gives you a chance to get started.

Download a free trial of Market Samurai the product that I use to find and rank my niche sites!

Let’s backtrack for a second, for those who are new to my site – here is what’s been going on.

At the start of October last year (2010), I was finding that my online business was starting to feel a bit stagnant, so I decided to set myself a challenge (because I always work harder when I do this).

The goal was to create a $1.000/month passive income from niche sites that I create AFTER the start of the challenge – so not including any sites that are already making me money. And the time frame I set myself was 8 months, resulting in a deadline of the end of July, 2011.

If you caught my last update midway this last month, you would have realized that I was on track to a really good month – but was most likely to pull up just shy of the $1,000 I was hoping for.

Guess What? I Made $1055.42 in May!

My sites really pulled it together in the last couple of weeks of May and I saw a dramatic increase in traffic to a couple of my sites and this saw me pass achieve my goal with a day to spare.

Instead of going through each site one-by-one, I will walk you through the overall traffic and income stats for the month and the things that made me the most money.

Income Breakdown

The first things everyone wants to see is the where the money came from, so here is what my niche sites made their money from:

• $811.29 – Adsense
• $210.35 – CheckMyStats (Australian CPA Network)
• $ 33.78 - Clickbank
• $1055.42 – TOTAL

Traffic Overview

I saw significant traffic growth, with two of my larger sites recording 100% and 200% increase on April. Here are the total/average numbers and I have also listed the best performing sites results as a guide.

• 12,515 – Visits (Best 7,436 Best)
• 35,045 – Pageviews (23,720 Best)
• 2.8 – Pages/Visit (3.41 Best)
• 56.49% – Average Bounce Rate (38.30 Best)
• 1:73 min – Average Time On Site (3:47 Best)

These stats are for the 8 niche sites that I started since October and the majority are seeing their main referral source as ‘search traffic’ at over 80%.

Why So Many Niche Sites?

Now I am sure a lot of you are wondering why I felt the need to have 8 sites, as opposed to focusing all my time and effort on just one or two?

There were a couple of reasons for this:

1. I Didn’t Want To Build Them Too Quickly

   There are way to many stories of people focusing on a single site, trying to get it to rank quickly, only to find it ending up in Google’s bad books. I saw this happen to one of my niche sites in this challenge and as hard as I have tried it is still getting barely any search traffic (when for a while it was getting a lot!).

   By having a number of sites to work on, it allows you to spread your time over all of them, meaning that they all grow at a steady and natural rate. I prefer to pick 2-3 sites to work on each week, giving the others a chance to settle before working on them further.

2. I Didn’t Want To Lose Interest

   I’m not sure about you, but I have a really hard time focusing on one thing for a long period of time. By having so many sites, I can almost guarantee that I will feel like writing about one of the topics, whereas if I only had one or two I could see myself getting bored very quickly.

3. I Strongly Believe In The 80/20 Rule

   I came across the Parento Principle (or the 80/20 rule) when reading The 4-Hour Workweek. The whole idea revolves around 20% of your outputted work results in 80% of your results. In other words, even if you spend the same amount of time on all your sites, some are going to grow a lot quicker while others may struggle to get off the ground.

   I’ve definitely seen this come into play during this challenge, with 2 of my sites (mainly one) getting the majority of the traffic and income. The interesting thing is that it is my two most recent sites (which I started at the end of January).

   What if I had decided that I had enough niche sites in December? I’d still be stuck earning about $3-400/month instead of achieving my goal of $1000!

So What Is Next For Me & My Sites?

Well if the first two days of June are anything to work off, I am on target to achieve the $1,000 mark again with my niche sites, but I know that I need to use the momentum I have built up over the last 8 months and work on doubling and then tripling this result – and I know it is not going to take another 8 months each time.

Here Is What I Am Doing Now & Have Planned

• Outsourcing To Increase Work Effort

  The majority of the work taken to achieve the result I did, was my own. I was writing all the articles, completing all the research and doing all the work. I have just recently hired a couple of part-time writers through oDesk (2 because it spreads my risk if one quits or goes missing), and I am looking forward to seeing my sites grow even quicker now. Their articles will be used for a mixture of blog posts, guest posts and articles.

• Focusing On Less Pages But More Quality Content

  My shift over the last couple of months has been to not writing as many posts or pages for my sites, but instead to writer longer and more in depth articles. I see a tw0-fold benefit here:

  • Your Articles Will Rank For More Long-tail Keywords
    It is simple maths, but the more words you have on a page, the more chance there is to have the right mixture for (very) long-tail searches. It you add tag’s into the mix as well, you are sure to see a lot more traffic and a large amount of different keywords.
  • You Don’t Have To Build Links To As Many Pages
    And the less posts that you write, the lest posts you have to think about building back links too. This means that you can focus on building quality back links instead of worrying about lots of low value ones.

• Not Creating A Niche Site Course (Free or Paid)

  I have had quite a few questions coming in about what I have been doing to get my results and whether I am going to teach people personally or create a course on niche sites.

  To be honest, there are more than enough courses (both free and paid) on the topic of niche sites and I neither have the desire or see the need to add another one into the mix. That being said, I have an interesting concept that I will most likely soft launch to my list, that is different to anything else I have seen – and if it gets traction I will let you all know here.

  If you want to make sure you get notified before everyone else, then jump on my list and hopefully I will get some info out on it in the next week or so.

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Well after the reception we both received from our first debate, Moon and I have decided to take to the podium again with a brand new debate on:

Comments, Or Closed Comments on Your Blog – Which Is Best?

1. Results In A More Simplified Design

   One of the things that annoys me the most about comments is how deceptive they can be when you first visit a blog. When every I first visit a blogs latest post, the first thing that I do is take a look at the scroll bar on the right and see how long I can expect this post to be.

   The problem with comments is that you can jump into the post thinking it is a couple of thousand words on what you are looking to learn – only to find it’s a couple of short paragraphs and hundreds of comments (most of them just say ‘thanks’, or ‘this is great’ just to get a link back to their site).

   What removing comments from a blog does is keeps the focus on the content and allows for a more simplistic design.

2. Encourages Interaction On Social Media Platforms

   Now while turning off comments may sound like you are cutting off communication between you and your readers, what you are really doing is redirecting the discussion to elsewhere.

   I remember the big stink that everyone kicked up when Seth Godin closed the comments on his blog. I didn’t think any more of it until the other day when I stumbled upon his Facebook page and saw things like this:

   
   Notice how he has not only still has given people the opportunity to comment on his posts, but by moving the whole commenting platform over to Facebook he is getting people to share his content and his brand without them even noticing.

   Because the thing about Facebook is that whenever you like or comment on something – it shows in all your friends feed. This means instant advertising.

   Try doing that with regular blog comments! :)

3. Increases Quality Of Comments (Yes You Will Still Get Them!)

   Also, by moving your comments off-site you are making it require more effort to leave a comment. What this should do is trim the fat and stop people who are leaving comments for the following reasons:
   

   1. Just To Get A Backlink
   2. To Leave A 2 Word ‘Thanks’ Comment

   
   And aside from all that, it will cut spam on your blog by 100% and you will get a lot less on Facebook(plus you can ban people quite easily).

   So basically what I am trying to say with this point is that because you are making it harder for people to comment – it means that only the people who actually have something to add will take the time and effort to leave a response.

   So while your comments may be less, they will most likely be of a higher quality.

So Are Blog Comments Dead?

Not in the slightest!

I definitely think there is a strong case for both sides of this debate – but I will let Moon try and convince you of that. On that note, here is a sneak peak at her side of the story.

Blogging is the essence of web 2.0! Blogging is all about sharing your views and one of the greatest signs of a thriving blog is community participation!
I believe that blogging should be used as a way to interact with your readers, to challenge them and have them challenge you back and to cultivate healthy discussions. The number of comments displayed on your post is a sign of a healthy community.

>> Read ‘Why Closing Comments Can Absolutely Kill Your Blog’

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Over To Murray…

There’s a wealth of information about blogging on the web; some good, some bad. In due time, you’ll noticed that a lot of the information you’ve read about blogging simply hasn’t helped.

Let’s take a look at some of the things that you probably haven’t been taught about blogging…

Blogging Isn’t An Overnight Success

The bloggers you look up to have a rich-seated history of hard work. People rarely launch a blog and have an instant hit; it truly does take years in most cases. The reason for this is that each person needs time to come into their own style, voice, direction and to plant the seeds for a powerful brand.

Realistically, your first blog may be a total flop but this is actually a good thing. If anything, learn from your first blog. Figure out what type of content people enjoy, learn how to interact with your community, discover the basics of link building and search engine optimization. Even though this blog may fail you will still be able to take the knowledge to the next.

Every blog has a tipping point; the moment where success begins to take momentum. Many bloggers will quit after just a few short months which is rarely ever the amount of time to create an impact. Be prepared to spend years working on your blog and building a community vs. keeping a pipe-dream of overnight success.

The Majority Of Bloggers Make Their Money Elsewhere

The income reports and earnings you see from fellow bloggers may dazzle you with large numbers; you may be quick to assume that all of these earnings are coming from their blog. What you may not know is that the vast majority of successful bloggers make their money from ventures outside of their blogs.

Your ventures and projects have a greater chance of success once you understand the process of building a successful website. Success begets success. Your blog, in actuality, is best used as a platform for your brand.

The majority of bloggers make their money from items such as personal coaching, speaking gigs, products, courses, niche websites and much more. The main blog you read is often the collective knowledge that the blogger has gained through their additional ventures (which creates an incredible opportunity for unique content that’s filled with value).

Relationships & Networking Trumps Content And SEO

Content and higher search engine rankings may get your foot in the door but it’s the relationships and networking that truly make or break the success of your blog.

Even the greatest content that’s highly optimized may be a total flop when it comes to brand and authority building. If people can’t find your content than a lot of it goes to waste. One way to make up for the lack of discovery is by building incredible relationships and a network to help one another get found.

A single tweet or share from a well known blogger can have substantial effects on how the community perceives your expertise and authority (it quite literally is authority by association). Relationships take time (just like content creation) but open a wealth of opportunities to break past the tipping point and build the momentum that will take you to success.

Large Numbers Do Not Mean You’re Successful

It’s easy to get wrapped up in the large numbers displayed on your favorite blogs. However, your perception of success and relevance should not be solely based on an RSS count or Twitter following.

Success comes down to the interaction of your community; conversions, more or less. A blog within a very specific niche won’t have the large numbers you’d see on other, larger niche blogs because there’s a smaller market, overall. It’s how devoted and passionate your community is that really creates a successful blog.

Aim to create a stable base for your community instead of chasing the numbers. Get just 100 people that actively share, promote and interact with your blog rather than thousands that sit idly by. Create an impact in just one person today and you will gain your solid foundation in just a few months time.

There’s A Higher Level Investment Than Just $100

It’s true, you can get a blog up and running on less than $100 after you’ve purchased a domain, hosting and theme. What you rarely hear, however, is that there is one additional investment that should be factored: time.

We only have a finite amount of time to get things done each day. You may not be paying for your own time but each action you take does have a monetary value attributed to it. That one hour you spent commenting on other blogs could have potentially cost you thousands of dollars because it could have been used contacting potential clients.

Additionally, to compete on a larger level you may also see an investment in other items such as design work, coding, software, online tools, informational resources and much more. If you wish to take your blog to a higher level than you’re more than likely to see a greater investment than just $100.

Conclusion

As noted, in the beginning, it can be difficult to gain the larger picture because there is simple too much information freely available on the web. Hopefully, with this post, you now realize there are a few things bloggers have been rather hush-hush about when it comes to creating a successful blog. How will you make an impact now that you have this knowledge?

About Murray

I help bloggers create businesses beyond their blogs. If you’re ready to start an online business than stop by Murlu.com where you’ll find a wealth of great information on launching your own venture based on what you already know from blogging.

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I’ve been chatting with Moon from Experiments In Passive Income and we were discussing the things that we believe are essential when it comes to blogging successfully.

One of the topics that popped up was ‘Produce Quality Content’ and since there has been a lot of talk lately about Google’s latest update (getting rid of a lot of spammy content) and the huge uptake of article spinners and blog syndication, we though it would a great idea to lay down our thoughts in a ‘blog on blog debate’.

Debate Topic:

Is Quality Content Necessary For A Successful Blog?

Now as you can tell by the post title, I am taking the affirmative stance (which I am stoked about – because it is the view that I personally take). So let me share with you exactly how importantly I rate producing quality content and then I will give you a sneak peek at what Moon has to say on the opposing point of view.

Rehashed Rubbish Can Make You Rich – But It Won’t Help Anyone…

Let me start out by saying that I have no doubt that by using rehashed PLR content  that provides absolutely no value you can still make a lot of money online – I see it happening every single day. But does money = success?

I’m not gonna lie, when I am writing content I sometimes find myself writing solely for the search engines with absolutely no thought for the end reader, but you know what? It makes me feel dirty.

You can make money from anything – but does that make it right?

Whether you started blogging because you wanted to make money online, or maybe you had more pure motives of writing about something you are passionate about (you definitely can mix the two), you want to be proud of the content that you produce.

Let Me Ask You Something…

If you parents or close friends came up to you and asked you to show them the websites that you use to make money online – would you be proud of what you show them?

Would you be able to say:

I have this niche site on ‘mining jobs’ and while I knew nothing about the topic to start with, the research that I put into learning what i needed to write the articles was very eye-opening.

Or would you say:

Ignore the content, I just write what makes the search engine sends me visitors. It makes me money – and that’s all I care about.

Doesn’t the second one just make you sound like a scammer?

Now while you wouldn’t actually say that to them (you would put a positive spin on it), basically that is what I see when I visit a lot of blogs.

Their strategy is:

Have no quality in your content, so that visitors will want to leave instantly – hopefully clicking through one of the many ads on your site.

Now there is nothing wrong with having a lot of ads on your site (take a look at all the popular news sites for example), but if you are not producing quality content – then basically you wasting peoples time, clogging up the search engines, and being of no use to anyone – except you.

As you can see, I am very passionate about quality content, which I guess stems from getting the following quote drilled into me as a kid:

If you don’t have anything good to say, don’t say it at all!

So Why Quality Content?

So what I wanted to do was take you through a couple of the reasons that I believe you should always make sure you are producing quality content.

1. People Read It

   As a blogger, online marketer or whatever you want to call yourself, you are not writing for search engines. The end user is always real people, and so that is who you should be writing for. Of course you should be using smart SEO, and targeting articles to keywords, but always make sure you are adding value, answering questions and helping people.

   People might say that this is just a conscience thing, but search engines (especially Google) take into account ‘time on site’ and ‘bounce rate’ when ranking sites/pages, so writing for

2. Search Engines Are For People

   Following on from my last point,if content is for people, and a search engines is to help people find the content that they are looking for, then if people want quality content, then that is what search engines aim to deliver.

   The search engines are getting a lot stricter and A LOT of websites (even big ones like) got hit with Google’s latest update. But a couple of the niche bloggers that I look up to (and know produce quality content) all saw their traffic stay normal – or even increase. That has to say something.

3. Everything Comes Back To You

   Whether you use different author names (pen names) or not, if people want to find out who owns a site they can.

   Do you want to be associated with poorly written, rehashed content that you can tell was written to just make money?

Let Me Clarify A Few Things Now…

Hopefully by now you will be starting to grasp how important I thing that producing quality content is – but a few of you might be wondering where I stand on a few things I mentioned at the start, so here goes.

1. Article Spinning & Blog Syndication

   Now I am sure you probably already know I am a fan of this strategy for link building – but doesn’t that contradict everything that I have just said?

   Well that depends on how you approach it. Here is a basic overview of my spinning/syndication process:

   • Write A Unique Article
     A lot of people use articles on their blog, spin them, submit them to directories and then link back to the original article on their blog. This method seems pointless to me, because then any visitors that arrive from a blog that is syndicating your content will get the same content a second time over. I personally write a brand new article specifically for spinning – and make sure I put quality time and effort into these articles.
   • Spend Quality Time Making Sure My Spun Sentences Make Sense
     I do not use software to automatically spin my articles. I use Spinz.me and manually select each individual replacement work. This method takes a lot longer, but also ensures that my spun articles are readable and most importantly make sense.

   I still think that this method is a valid SEO strategy (which is why I will continue to use ArticleRanks) and if done correctly can be done while continuing to produce quality content.

Let’s Hear A Sneak Peek From Moons Side Of The Story…

We can take this a step further. Take a look at some blogs, for instance Perez Hilton or TMZ, and their first priority is to get the news out there first (and hopefully be the first ones out there to do so). These news blurbs aren’t any shining examples of brilliant journalism but they do their intended job. No one complains about the so-called quality of the writing as long as they these people are in the know about Charlie Sheen’s latest (psychedelic?) rant or how much blow Lohan’s snorted.

Read the rest of Moon’s side using the link below:

• Why You Shouldn’t Give A Crap About The Quality Of Your Content

Over To You…

Hopefully by now you have read both sides of this debate and obviously you have your own opinions on the topic. Let us both know where your thinking lies and whether you think ‘quality content’ has any effect on whether or not a blog is successful or not.

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Since there is such a strong focus on ‘niche blogs’ on this site, I have been chatting with a lot of people who are just starting out with niche sites and one thing that everyone seems to be telling me is,

‘I can’t seem to find that many keywords related to my niche!’

The whole purpose of a niche site is to build as much search engine traffic as possible so that your sites begin to run (and profit) on auto-pilot.

So basically what these people are really saying is:

How can I get more search engine traffic to my niche site?

In this post I want to show you how totally dominate a niche WITHOUT the need to be ranking number one for your main keywords!

2 Things That Will Dramatically Increase Your Search Engine Traffic

1. Target The Low Hanging Fruit

One of the reasons I believe that I always failed at getting any significant traffic to my niche sites is because I followed the standard practice that everyone else seemed to be doing, which was, ‘create a 5 to 10 page site around a topic and then start building links.

The only problem with this strategy is that when you follow this strategy, you are targeting the 5-10 most popular keywords in that micro niche – meaning there is still quite a bit of competition and unless you are ranking 1-2 for the majority of those keywords then you are only ever going to get a trickle of traffic to your niche site.

The strategy I now follow (which really works for me) is something I call The Keyword Tree (Free premium video – no optin).

I encourage you to watch the video I linked too above because it explains it so thoroughly (and includes a free worksheet), but for those of you looking for the simple version.

• Find Your 5 Main Keywords

  Just like the regular strategy, I still find the 5 best keywords to target in the niche (with good daily traffic and minimal search competition), and make these the PAGES of my new niche site. This is the premium content that is in the header navigation and the ones that I focus the majority of my internal back linking too.

• Target The 100′s Of Keywords That No One Else Is Targeting

  A lot of people stop at the last point and wonder why they are not getting a lot of traffic – I just keep writing.

  If you are keen to absolutely dominate a niche, then you need to get your content in front of EVERYONE who is searching for anything related to your niche! So that is what I do. So how do I find these keywords and what are my criteria?

  Firstly, as always, I use Market Samurai and the criteria that I search for is:

  • Minimum of 1 ‘exact’, ‘daily’ search a day (up to about 5 – where there starts to get some more competition)
  • Zero to extremely low competition (so you start ranking instantly!)

  Let me give you an example of what happens when you start to do this, and the results that I have seen in about days from my new mining site.

  
  So, if you can remember I started this site on Australia Day (January 26th) and took a couple of days to get the initial content on the site. The above image is keyword referral stats from the 1st-17th of Febuary, and as you can see I am happy to announce 192 visits from the search engines in that time period (site is currently averaging about 20-25 visits a day).

  But the interesting thing that you will notice in the visits column is that the most an individual keyword has been the referral is 11 (and those would be visitors of StandOutBlogger, because I didn’t link to the site), the rest is from 146 other keywords!

  Now this doesn’t mean that I have had to write almost 150 different blog posts, in fact this is from 4 pages (my main keywords) and 4 blog posts (my low hanging fruit).

  Let me give you an example of what ‘low hanging fruit looks like in Market Samurai.

  
  Now you will notice that some of these are not phrases that you would use together in a sentence – just ignore them and focus on the ones that do.

  Look at the competition for these keywords?  (What competition?)

  All these phrases are search at least 2 times a day (exact) and basically no competition!

  The easiest way dominate a niche is to dominate the low hanging fruit.

2. Write For People

I know this seems obvious, but it is surprising how many people focus so hard on the search engines that they forget that in the end it is real people who will be reading their content.

What Does This Mean?

• Tone Down The SEO

  Have you ever read an article that you have found through a search engine and automatically picked the phrase they were targeting? It seems to be everywhere and usually they try to sneak the keyword in so many times that it ends up in places that don’t make grammatical sense.

  I have done this, but aside from the fact that I think that Google is starting to hone in on this type of content, I have found that regular content that is optimised seems to rank just as well. Still target a keyword but write for your readers.

• Provide Real Value

  Writing for readers means providing value. People use search engines to find an answer, please answer their question and don’t just lead them around in circles. This will result in a very high bounce rate and unhappy readers.

• Help Your Visitors Share Your Content

  If you are providing valuable content to your readers and answer their questions, then they will most likely want to share your content, the easiest way is with plugins, here are a couple of my favourite:

  • Sexy Bookmarks
  • New Twitter Button
  • FB Like Button

What Happens When You Write For People

I wanted to share with you a screenshot of my traffic  (once again from my mining site) that shows what starts to happen when you begin to focus on writing for people instead of solely for search engines.

For those of you who are wondering about the weird referral addresses. All the ones from ‘mail.live.com’ are people who have visited my content from an hotmail email account.

As you can see, I have had 10 people visit my niche site in 17 days from people sharing my content with other people they know (and look at the ‘time on site’ for shared traffic!)

That Is How You Dominate A Niche!

I am surprised by the focus that people put into the products they will promote and the ads they will show, when their site is getting no traffic.

Instead of worrying about what you plan on monetizing your site with, why no focus on the two tips above:

• Target Low Hanging Fruit
• Write For People

And work on dominating your niche!

Because once you have the traffic, you won’t have a problem monetizing it!

These are my thoughts and what has been working for me, but I’d love to hear your stories on what you have been doing to dominate your niche!

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I think that sometimes we set up our ad spots and affiliate offers when we first launch a new niche blog and then never actually take the time to analyze if they are actually converting into sales,clicks or leads.

Today I want to take you through a quite change that I did to one of the ads on my online surveys for money site – and what happened next.

How It Was:

The ad in question is the GlobalTestMarket Surveys one at the top of the sidebar.

It had all the signs of being a good little earner.

• Simple Animated Ad
• Quality Company
• $2.25 Per Lead

The only problem was, that for the whole month of January it made me $0.00!

So I started looking around for a replacement banner and here is the change I made…

What It Is Now:

The new company I am promoting is FreebieFix on the CheckMyStats affiliate network. And here are a few reasons why I choose this affiliate offer:

• Ad Is Australian Focused
• ‘Free Samples’ Grabs People Attention
• High Quality Banner Ad

However, this offer only had a $1.40 commission per lead (so a little bit less than before).

How Has The New Ad Performed?

I made this change on the 1st of February, so this new ad is currently on it’s 12th day of running, and here are my results:

Note: I edited the above image to remove all other campaigns from my CheckMyStats account – this is why the numbers are not sequential.

So as you can see, I have averaged one lead each 3 days, to a total of $5.60.

While this may not seem like a lot, this is approximate $10/month or $120/year of additional income that I would have been missing out on.

What Does This Mean For You?

The main reason I wanted to share this with you was so that you would have a look at the different affiliate offers on your niche sites and do two things:

1. Check The Performance Of Each Ad Individually

2. Trial New Affiliate Offers On Under-Performing Adspots

Doing these two simple things could potentially have a significant effect on your monthly income – so I encourage you to take some time to analyse your current ad spots.

Have you ever change an ad over and seen a positive result? I’d love to hear your story below!

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Conducting my ads-free niche site case study has got me thinking a bit creatively.

My mining niche site is starting to get some decent search engine traffic and I have been thinking of ways of profiting from this traffic without the need for adsense, private ad sales or affiliate links (which would ruin the case study).

So I wanted to share with you a couple of ideas that I had, as well as let you in on my plans for monetising my mining site.

1. Build An Email List

   All the big internet marketers are always touting the fact that if you want to make money online ‘you need to be building an email list’ (probably just so that you will sign up for theirs).

   I have had a on-off relationship with list building, but there are definitely some great benefits if you create a free product that is valuable and send emails that focus on helping and not just selling. So if you are focusing on building a quality, content focused niche site then building an email list that you can use to promote your content and related products could be a great way to keep your blog ad-free.

   Recommended Products For Email Marketing:

   • Aweber
     If you are looking to build an email list then you want to make sure that you are using a reputable email marketing software/website to collect and store you emails (to make sure you meets the can-spam act). I use Aweber because it came highly recommended to me, and you can get start for just $1 for your first month!
   • Popup Domination
     Sure you can just use the standard email sign up boxes in your sidebar but if you really want to ramp up your list building then you need something that grabs your readers attention. Popups are handy little tools, but having them show up as soon as you visit a site is just down-right annoying. 

     With Popup Domination you can set it up so that it shows 1 or 2 minutes after visitors first access your page – so they have tasted your content before being asked to subscribe. Read my Popup Domination review.

2. Create A Product

   Your second option is to create your own product.

   Now, the problem with creating a sale-able product for a niche site is that most people do not have the expertise or knowledge in the area of their niche site – but don’t let this stop you. If you do not feel qualified to create an information product that people will pay you money for then you have a couple of options.

   • Outsource Product Creation
     I am a massive believer in outsourcing jobs that are either too hard or too time consuming. There are plenty of people willing and ready to do the research that you need to create the product that you desire. I would use oDesk to find a writer.
   • Compile Information That Saves People Time
     Another options is creating a product that is a list of resources that your visitors are most likely looking for. The internet is full of information and businesses and finding the right information can be like going on a merry-go-round. If you can compile a list of where your visitors can find the information they are looking for, and it saves them hours of work is that not work $7-20?

Which Option Did I Choose?

Well, I was at work the other day wheel-barrowing  a massive pile of sand – while thinking about my niche blogs. And I was thinking about what people visiting my mining site were actually looking for.

I narrowed it down to two different things:

• Information on ‘Where’ They Can Find A Mining Job
• Information on ‘How’ To Get A Mining Job

Now, I have never had a mining job so I can’t create a product on how to get a job in the mines – but I am good at digging up information and I know for certain that there are countless mining companies all around Australia that are looking for workers.

So, why not compile a list of all the mining companies that have websites/contact details available and put together an information product giving potential mining workers a list of companies that might be interested in employing them.

Not a massive idea, and most likely not a ‘million dollar idea’, but I think that it is something that people would be looking for and willing to hand over at least $7 – to save them the hours of research it would take them.

What Does That Mean For You?

What I am trying to do with this post is to open your eyes to other opportunities.

When people think of niche sites, they automatically picture Adsense ads and affiliate banners – but I think that if you want to have a steady long-term income from your niche sites, then you need to diversified portfolio (just like with the share market).

Are you doing anything different with your niche sites? How are you making money from yours?

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