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Archive for the ‘Advice for Bloggers’ Category

Expanding Your Blog Across Multiple Platforms: Advice from the blog experts

by Paige Wilcox
Friday, February 22nd, 2013

Bigger Blog Traffic in Ten Steps

by kaley
Wednesday, October 3rd, 2012

So, you’ve started a blog to share your insights, poems, dreams or rants. Now what? Blogging is easy — just a few clicks and publish! — but building a widely read blog takes planning, hard work, and (often) some luck. Here are ten steps that will help you grow your  blog’s readership:

1. Find your niche

Write about what you know best, and be sure it’s something that you find interesting– if your blog doesn’t interest you, how will it interest your readers?

2. Be unique

You may not be the only blog about sports, or food, or fashion, but your presentation can set you apart from the others. Alex Balcerski of Ride The Pine focused on using a unique format to differentiate from similar sports humor blogs:

The most unique thing about Ride The Pine is our video show (creatively called) Ride The Pine. I originally started the website to feature this 3-5 minute show that would focus on the lighter side of sports, the best videos of the week, and my (poorly crafted) jokes. After just a few weeks, it was featured in iTunes as a ‘New and Noteworthy’ podcast. There is not another sports blog out there that does a video show like ours.

3. Become an expert

Expertise can also set you apart, and give your blog value- particularly if you get in on the ground floor on a new craze or movement. Yes, there will always be someone better, smarter, or more skilled than you, but you don’t have to be the best to be an authority. The simplest way to be an authority? Teaching, says Copyblogger, “…taking something hard and making it easy” for your readers.

4. Be consistent

Update your blog regularly, even daily. Blogads’ bloggers spend anywhere from 3 hours a week to 3 hours a day working on their blogs. Start by focusing on the quantity of your posts, and build on the quality of your posts later (don’t forget spell check in the meantime). Your hard work will pay off in the long run, says Alexandra Stafford of Alexandra Cooks:

It brings me such joy to read an email from someone who has had success with a recipe and who has brought joy to his/her family or friends or significant other or just for his/herself in the process. Nothing makes me happier, truly. The pains I have experienced are pretty trivial overall.

5. Find an audience

Share your ideas and posts on the proper channels. Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ are multifaceted and ready for any type of content, but other networks can be specific to your content. Blogging about food or fashion? Some bloggers have had success with Pinterest. The benefit of participating in these networks is that they have a built-in user base ready to consume and share your content. Just be warned: creating an interesting fan page is a good step, but not as important as using it to drive traffic to your blog.

6. Join a community

Interact with new readers by liking their comments on other blogs and leaving comments of your own; just remember to be specific and don’t choke your target audience with blatant self-promotion.

7. Befriend other bloggers

Share the love with other bloggers by linking to their posts and guest blogging (also an effective way to find new readers), a little teamwork goes a long way.

8. Found (or support) a cause

Blogging for a cause isn’t just good for publicity, it’s a tangible way for you to give your support to something you believe in and for readers to “…connect with the blogger behind the blog,” says Nikki Parkinson of Styling You.

9. Forget about #7 and get in a fight

It may be controversial, but if you follow the rules, getting in a “blogfight” can be a great way to grab some attention for your blog (and some readers while you’re at it). The key, says The Blog Herald, is to stick to your guns and make your argument worthwhile:

…[I]f you have something really worthwhile to say, there is a chance you’d be taken seriously and provoke a healthy discussion…good blogfights can be made by fueling intelligent discussions, even among parties with opposing arguments… some of the world’s biggest problems are better solved by throwing bright minds into the mix and get them to bash their own ideas until the best ones stand out.

As in diplomacy, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” And inevitably when there’s a blogfight, the people to dislike the person you’re fighting with will often wade in on your side and sometimes become long-term allies.

10. One last thing- keep at it!

The best blogs weren’t a success overnight. Geraldine DeRuiter of The Everywhereist took more than 2 years 500 posts to get where she is today- one of Time’s Best Blogs of 2011. With a little bit of patience and these ten steps as your guide, you’ll soon accomplish your goal of creating a great blog.

See the Blogads blog for more helpful advice and insight into blogging, including interviews with successful bloggers like Sonja Foust of Pintester and Jim Romenesko of JimRomenesko.com.

Photo by Flickr user Christopher Stephen

Advertise here: The anatomy of a great sales page

by Nick Faber
Friday, March 23rd, 2012

We’ve all seen links on our favorite blogs that say something like “buy ads here” or “advertise here,” but unless you’re an advertiser, you may not have clicked to find out where that link takes you. If a blogger really wants to make money blogging, she will have a landing page full of compelling information and options for advertisers. And that’s at the very least.

Today, we’ll learn how to make a kick-ass advertising page by looking at advertiser pages that already kick ass. (more…)

Pounce on your muse now!

by Paige Wilcox
Friday, March 23rd, 2012
Gala Darling, Jessica Harlow and Angel Laws at Social Media Week NYC

Bloggers have an array of community-building tools and techniques at their disposal, but don’t forget that content is the backbone of a site’s longevity and success.

Bloggers Jessica Harlow (JessicaHarlow.com), Angel Laws (ConcreteLoop.com) and Gala Darling (GalaDarling.com) all lauded the importance of producing the content that you would want to see, yourself, during their appearance at Social Media Week’s “Creating Community Around Your Blog” event. (more…)

Webinar replay: How to attract more advertisers

by Nick Faber
Monday, February 6th, 2012

Did you miss Friday’s free webinar for bloggers? Don’t worry. Here’s the replay of the entire presentation, and you can find the slides below.

Have a question about this webinar or suggestions for future webinars? Feel free to contact the hosts, Paige Wilcox or Nick Faber, via Twitter or send an email to blog-tech[at]blogads[dot]com. Or even better, leave a comment!

How to attact more advertisers.

View more presentations from Nick Faber
Check out our previous webinar for bloggers, Facebook: Are you doing it right?

Bloggers: Win new advertisers with discount codes

by Nick Faber
Thursday, November 3rd, 2011

Trying to attract more advertisers to your blog? Several of our bloggers have had success winning new ads with the discount code feature, which is available to all bloggers in the Blogads network.

As retailers have known for years, discounts and coupons are a sure way to grab the attention of would-be customers. With discount codes, you can create your own coupon, start your own flash sale, and make more money blogging.

Check out our new discount codes video and learn how to make this feature work for you:

We’ll share your discount code!
Send us your discount code via comments or Twitter, and we’ll post the first 10 we receive to our Facebook wall!

Advanced ad placement and pricing guide for bloggers

by Nick Faber
Thursday, October 13th, 2011

Our proprietary Blogads unit has been helping people make money blogging since 2002, and it’s still the most popular unit we sell. But as online advertising has evolved, so have we. Today, we offer 10 different ad units to meet the needs of advertisers and bloggers alike.

In general, we recommend that you run as many of these different units on your blog as you can fit, so you can provide options to all sizes of advertisers. Also, don’t forget to put the ad code on every page. The more ad impressions you can offer, the more money you can ask for.

In this post, we’ll break these ad units into three categories, Blogads, banners and adverposts, and show you how to place and price each for maximum attractiveness to advertisers.

1. Blogads


Placement:

As we showed you in the guide to placing Blogads units, the topmost leftmost placement is the best place to attract advertisers. If you don’t have a left sidebar, then the top of the right sidebar would be the most effective placement for your blog. (more…)

How to drive traffic to your blog using Facebook [Webinar Replay]

by Nick Faber
Friday, September 30th, 2011

Facebook is one of the biggest sources of traffic for any web site or blog. Are you making Facebook work for your blog?

Here’s our webinar, “Facebook: Are you doing it right?” We hope these tips will help you drive more traffic to your blog. And the more traffic you’ve got, the more attractive you’ll be to advertisers. (more…)

Placement guide for standard Blogads units

by Nick Faber
Friday, September 23rd, 2011

So you’ve decided to make money blogging with Blogads.com. Awesome! One of the most frequently asked questions we get from new bloggers is where to place Blogads code to attract the most advertisers.

Here’s our guide to Blogads code placement, from optimal to not-at-all optimal.

Optimal: Top Left

This is the perfect spot for Blogads! Readers tend to scan a page from left to right, top to bottom, and placing your Blogads at the top of your leftmost column will maximize your reader’s engagement with the ads, and make your blog more desirable to advertisers. (more…)

5 Blogs doing Facebook Fan Pages right

by Nick Faber
Tuesday, September 6th, 2011

image by Sean MacEntee

A kick-ass Facebook page is a great supplement for any blog looking to increase site traffic and ultimately make more money blogging. Here are 5 bloggers that are making Facebook work for them.

A couple of these pages feature a fancy HTML landing page. We know that not everyone has a developer or designer on staff, so we’ll also focus on how the pages are used once readers get past the landing page.

1. Methodshop.com (Facebook page)

  • – Regularly chooses interesting Facebook fan as for a “Superfan” interview and to be featured in Methodshop’s profile pic
  • – Asks questions when posting links to content, encouraging fan interaction and clicks
  • – Interacts with other Facebook pages, comments on and “likes” other pages’ posts (more…)

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