It is said that ‘changing to a lion is not the problem, but getting the tail of a lion.” Honestly, I don’t know what is so special about the tail of a lion. But I do know that creating a blog is so easy, that it has become a pastime for so many people! But getting people to visit your site is crux of the matter. That’s the hard part!
A lot of publishers claim they have ‘secrets’ used in driving traffic to their sites , and many are offering one e-book or the other containing these ‘secrets’ at different prices. But the fact remains that driving traffic to your site is not that simple or that difficult. It is important rather that your site (or blog) grows organically as a direct result of superior contents and appeal. However, slow growth of your site also infers slow flow of income.
Experts are however of the opinion that certain amount of publicity be done by you to promote your site. The list of such recommended activity is very exhaustive. Here are some I intend to use to promote my site:
1. Contents
A good content will not only attract traffic, but will keep them coming, and might even earn you good free links. I have linked to several sites that I found very useful content wise. I have also bookmarked various. Ensure your site is updated periodically, and keep enough content in the archive to sustain traffic. An advertiser once rejected my application because I do not have up to 30 pages of content! Another expert once said, you should have at least 100 pages of quality content before lunching your site. Content is key! Quality content is invaluable, this cannot be over emphasised.
2. Link Exchange
Exchanging links with similar sites is one sure way of getting traffic. If search engines crawls those sites, they’ll find your link as well. Link exchange can be direct or indirect. You can send a direct request to be linked to a site. Or you can comment on a related site, and sign off with your name and URL (your link). Of course comments should be purposeful in nature, and meaning. It should not be an opportunity to spam.
3. Search Engines
Most people get to a site through search engines like Google, Yahoo, AltaVista. Making your site easy to find by the search engines is by no means an easy task. There are billions of web pages out there, and thousands, perhaps millions offering the same (or similar) products or contents as yours. Most searchers hardly go beyond the second page of Search Engine results. Making your site appear in the first page (with a good page rank) is very critical. This is the domain of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) experts. However, whether you are an SEO expert or not, you must have a fair idea of SEO to succeed as an online small business owner, or blogger.
Submit your site to as many search engines as you can. This will help speed up the time it takes for search engines to locate and crawl your site.
4. Link baiting
This refers to the strategy of creating controversy to generate interest and traffic to your site. Opinions that contradict popular beliefs is sure to generate reactions. This strategy if tactically deployed may generate steady follow of traffic to your site. Be careful though not to breach the terms of agreement of your site host, your adverts providers, or break the law. The first time I tried link baiting with this poem, the love struck friend deleted me from her facebook friends list. I got 21 new hits, and 2 new followers from the unexpected furore that followed before I was deleted! Is it worth it? Be the judge!
5. Affiliate Programs
Having affiliate program sites link to your site can also be very rewarding in terms of traffic flow. However, affiliate programs come with banners, and adverts many which may not be related to your site content. So when signing up for affiliate programs, be careful not to allow banners to clog your pages. My visitors are interest in contents of my site not in adverts, and banners! I’m sure same will apply to your visitors.
6. Advertise!
The adverts run on my sites by Adsense or the alternative like Albrite, and Chitika are placed by sites like mine. So depending on budget, advertising may be a good way of getting steady traffic to your site.
7. Forums, and Social Networking site
Posting in forums, and social networking sites, like facebook, MySpace, twitter, dig, etc can be a very good way to promote your site. Helpful comments in forum discussions relating to your site contents can help generate interest and traffics to your site. Attach your site URL to relevant postings and comments. Again, here, be careful not to spam! Spamming is generally not ethical beside some search engines can ban your site for spamming.
There are of course many other ways of driving traffic to your site. A combination of some of these methods will help your site to gradually witness an increase in traffic. This therefore serves as a guide of how you may go about it.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Alternatives to Google Adsense
It can be very frustrating from my experience getting approval for Google AdSense. What’s more, there have been numerous complaints from bloggers (publishers) of been unfairly banned by Adsense. Some complained of having their earnings not paid to them, because Google suspects or believe that have breached some of the AdSense usage policy. Whichever the case, putting all your advertisement hope in one vendor, might not be entirely good for your online business.
You can still make money online by joining affiliate programs, sell products, etc, but without adverts on your sites, the potential for full monetization of your sites is greatly reduced. Hence it is important to research on alternatives to Google AdSense as you embark on your money making venture. Besides, some of the alternatives can actually be used to complement your earnings with AdSense. Some of the Alternative I found include but not limited to the following:
The ultimate choice of which you choose depends of you. Personally, I added Albrite, and Chitika as secondary advertisers on my blogs.
In the next blog, the journey continues!
Saturday, August 22, 2009
The trouble with Google AdSense
Google AdSense is a superpower in online adverting. With several billion dollars in online advertising market shares value going through Google, who wouldn’t be interested in the advertisement giant? So naturally, having created my first two blogs, I thought it wise to get advertisement on it. I wanted first to see how the adverts will affect my web pages. And of course to start earning money online!
The www.blogger.com blogs sites comes with a monetize link that takes you to Google AdSense site for registration. Among other fields, you will be required to provide a country, and valid postal address. That was the beginning of my problem.
I live and work in Accra, Ghana. The house numbering system here in Accra, is almost non-existent, in some places, street names don’t even exist! Postal mails are however routed through an efficient P.O.Box system.
However, Google AdSense requires detailed house address with numbers. I tried using my office address, to no avail. Google AdSense rejected my application three times due to this problem. For each rejection I reworked the address, adding more descriptions (or taking from it). The option to change country was not enabled for modification. It was frustrating as well as confusing. Finally, the account was disabled before it was even approved. And once Google AdSense disables your account, you cannot use the email associated with that account again for AdSense. There is a link option to complain and get your account reactivated. I filled and submitted one explaining the problem with street numbers in Accra Ghana, hoping that AdSense will reconsider. They never did!
I needed adverts on my sites; otherwise, the plan will be stillborn. While I awaited decision on my appeal, I started looking for other alternative to Google AdSense There are of course claims of several other good alternatives; I will provide you links to some of them in the next blog.
However, it occurred to me I could use my yahoo.com e-mail address. My blogsite is attached to my Gmail address, and also the disabled Adsense Account. I use the same gmail account for the Google AdSense, as it would provide me with a single login. Now using my yahoo account, I also opted to use my address in Nigeria as the postal address. Five days later or thereabout, I stumbled upon a mail from Google AdSense that my account has been approved! What a relief! It was supposed to have been approved within 1-3 working days, but like they say: “better late, than never.”
Now that was the trouble with Google AdSense. Unfortunately, as I learnt from my researches, that is not the only problem with Google AdSense. The next blog will highlight some other problems bloggers do encounter with Google AdSense, why you should try alternatives, and link to sites with good articles on alternatives.
The www.blogger.com blogs sites comes with a monetize link that takes you to Google AdSense site for registration. Among other fields, you will be required to provide a country, and valid postal address. That was the beginning of my problem.
I live and work in Accra, Ghana. The house numbering system here in Accra, is almost non-existent, in some places, street names don’t even exist! Postal mails are however routed through an efficient P.O.Box system.
However, Google AdSense requires detailed house address with numbers. I tried using my office address, to no avail. Google AdSense rejected my application three times due to this problem. For each rejection I reworked the address, adding more descriptions (or taking from it). The option to change country was not enabled for modification. It was frustrating as well as confusing. Finally, the account was disabled before it was even approved. And once Google AdSense disables your account, you cannot use the email associated with that account again for AdSense. There is a link option to complain and get your account reactivated. I filled and submitted one explaining the problem with street numbers in Accra Ghana, hoping that AdSense will reconsider. They never did!
I needed adverts on my sites; otherwise, the plan will be stillborn. While I awaited decision on my appeal, I started looking for other alternative to Google AdSense There are of course claims of several other good alternatives; I will provide you links to some of them in the next blog.
However, it occurred to me I could use my yahoo.com e-mail address. My blogsite is attached to my Gmail address, and also the disabled Adsense Account. I use the same gmail account for the Google AdSense, as it would provide me with a single login. Now using my yahoo account, I also opted to use my address in Nigeria as the postal address. Five days later or thereabout, I stumbled upon a mail from Google AdSense that my account has been approved! What a relief! It was supposed to have been approved within 1-3 working days, but like they say: “better late, than never.”
Now that was the trouble with Google AdSense. Unfortunately, as I learnt from my researches, that is not the only problem with Google AdSense. The next blog will highlight some other problems bloggers do encounter with Google AdSense, why you should try alternatives, and link to sites with good articles on alternatives.
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