How To Manage Your Blog From A To Z

Providing an Entry to Your Site with Premium Content and Membership

Your blog can also serve as an entry to an online site with premium content and membership communities. Another way to get to this content and community might be through a link from your squeeze page or website. But your blog can be a good entry point, because it is ever changing as you add new blogs, whereas a squeeze page and website are generally more permanent, apart from occasional updating. The basic idea of sites with premium content is that you have high-value content that others will pay to access like on http://pcmate.org.

Since there is so much free information on the Internet, this content has to be truly unique or provide insider information, or perhaps you might provide access to you or other experts in the field, so users can contact you personally, such as through a webinar, phone call, coaching, consulting, or a face-to-face meeting.

Increasing Your SEO Ranking

While SEO can be important, when people search on Google or Yahoo and find you, initially focus on creating good content, building relationships with influencers, including guest bloggers, and offering your books and programs for sale. Then, your site will gradually rise naturally in the rankings, which is what I found with the Publishers, Agents and Films site.

I posted blogs about once a week dealing with different ways for writers to find publishers and agents, self-publish, and find film producers, and after about a month, the site appeared on page 4 of a search with the words "publishers" and "agents." A few weeks after that, the site was on the 3rd page, then on page 2, and it worked its way up from the bottom, so now it is on the top of that page. If I put in other combinations, such as "publishers" and "films," it is number 1 on the first page.

Sharing Your Blogs on the Social Media

You can put links to your blog, much like posting links to your squeeze page or website, on the social media, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. But along with these links, include some copy describing how visitors will find going there helpful or interesting, so they will click the links. This posting can be on your news feed, updates, status, or fan pages. Then, too, if your followers and fans like your posting, they might pass it on, and maybe these recipients might, too, which is how posts can go viral.

If you belong to groups interested in your subject area, try posting information there, too. Today, using the social media is so important that you want to let others know about your blogs in this way.

To Advertise or Not to Advertise

While some bloggers use ads, such as through Google AdSense, to bring in money when people click on the ad, you can make more sometimes much more using the same ad space to sell your own products or services. Or if you are promoting an affiliate product or program, you can make more selling that.

The general consensus of marketing experts on blogging is that it is better not to use ads on your blog, such as display ads, which are like sidebar, header, or footer ads on your site. Often such ads are provided by ad networks, which are companies like Google AdSense, which pairs advertisers with bloggers and takes a percentage from the profit. If you want to use an ad network, besides Google AdSense, which is the most popular one, other networks are Blogads, BlogHer, Beacon Ads, Federated Media, Sovrn, Media.Net, Rivit, Sway, and many others. But the problem with accepting these ads on your blog site is that you have to be in a unique niche in which advertisers will pay a lot of money for clicks on their ads – say blogging about end of life services and the funeral industry. So generally, you won’t make much money for clicks, and your content could get lost in your ads. Another problem is that Google penalizes sites with too many links above the fold in their search rankings.

The one exception to putting ads on your blog site might be using private ads. Typically these are buttons, graphics, or small display ads that appear on the sidebars of blogs, and you arrange to post them directly with an individual, small, business or company. But instead of a pay-for-clicks arrangement, you generally work out a flat fee. While companies might come to you, especially as you get more viewers, generally you need to reach out to them. A good way to do so is to look at other bloggers in your niche and see who is advertising on their sites; then contact those individuals or companies and invite them to advertise on your site. To find out what to charge, look for the advertising pages or media kits of the other bloggers. However, if you do pursue any advertising on your blog, be sure that the type of company and their message

is compatible with what you are blogging about. For example, if you are blogging about fishing, since you have a book on becoming a great fisherman, look for advertisers with products about fishing.