11 tools that have helped make it all possible…

Not all of these tools directly contribute to the bottom line, but each one of them have been very helpful over the last couple years.

• Google Analytics – which is a wonderful (and free) statistics tool that will help you keep track of your visitors and analyze a lot of data about them. As I mentioned before it now integrates with Adsense to give even more valuable data.
• Semiologic WP Theme – This is the theme I used to use for most of my WordPress sites. It costs about $300 for the full version, but I started with the free version, which I think is far more customizable than the vast majority of WP themes out there already. So if you are just starting out your probably don’t need the full version yet, but eventually it is probably worth considering. For what it has allowed me to do I know that it has paid for itself many times over.
• Google webmaster tools – This will help you see how Google views your blog. They will also let you know if there are any problems with it that you may not be aware of. For me I had some issues that were really hurting my search rankings, but I found out about them and fixed them and voila! All better.
• Aweber Email Marketing Service – I haven’t been using this too long, but if you read anything about internet marketing, you will certainly hear about the incredible value in having an email list. I have been happy with Aweber thus far.
• Google’s Keyword Tool – This is a great tool to get ideas about popular keywords as well.
• SEObook Keyword Tool – I use this to get a ballpark estimate of how many people are searching for particular key phrases.
• SocialPoster – This tool allows you to submit articles to multiple social sites. I used to use it to submit to about the top 5-10 social sites.
• Hittail.com – This one provides ideas for articles based on what you have previously written about and could probably rank for. I just noticed that the free version is gone. If you have a blog that is established it might be worth paying $10 a month for it – I suggest doing the free-trial and see how much it helps you.
• Stock.xchng – The best free stock photography site I have found.
• BigStock - The best cheap stock photography site I have found. They have lots of images that you can get for just about a buck.
• Feedburner – If you have a blog, you will want to burn a feed. Feedburner makes this fun, organized, and easy…

A few more tools that may be worth checking out…

• Scribe SEO Tool for WordPress – I wrote a more thorough review of this tool that the blogging tips subscribers received (you can sign up for free below if interested). But basically, I tried it out and decided not to continue to use it because I thought it was priced a little to high for what I got from it. It can make the SEO process a bit easier, but I just wasn’t sure about spending $27 on it. If they lower the price, I might recommend it a bit more.
• How To Build A Successful Blog Business – I haven’t read this ebook yet, but some of the biggest names in the business have some great things to say about the book.
• Frugal Theme for WordPress – This is another premium theme like Thesis and I haven’t tried it out yet, but it seems to be gaining popularity.
• Yaro Starak’s (and Leslie’s) Become a Blogger Training Course – I haven’t tried this, but have heard good things about it. Yaro is an extremely successful internet marketer and I have learned a whole lot from him. If I were starting out today and could afford the program, I would do it.

How I increased Adsense earnings $1500 in less than 3 months

This section is going to be a little bit beyond the basics and I will provide details of how I dramatically improved earnings from Adsense. Just to clarify, at the time of this increase I was already making some money with Adsense, but I had no idea how much difference a few tweaks could make. In my case I increased earnings over $1500 in a short amount of time. The thing you have to understand about Adsense is that no two sites are alike. Every blog has a different audience and different articles and most likely a different layout, all these things affect Adsense earnings. Knowing that, testing and trying new things is critical to find the winners!

1. Added a Privacy Policy

This is such a simple thing to do. I never realized that is a “requirement” for Adsense publishers, but when I added a link in my footer to my Privacy Policy there was a noticeable increase in earnings. I assume that Google rewards those who have a privacy policy and punishes those that don’t by trimming their earnings. In a perfect world you would want your lawyer to draft your privacy policy, but here is a sample template of a privacy policy to make your life a bit easier.

2. Put ads where people’s eyeballs went…

For me there is an eternal struggle between usability and profitability with ads. While I want need to make money to pay my bills, I still want to make this site as user friendly as possible. So, I have made some sacrifices with this site in order to maintain certain levels of usability, but one of the main keys to making money with Adsense is ad placement. Like I mentioned before, this needs to be experimented with. But for the first year or more of this site I just kinda threw the ads where ever I had extra room. Once I changed the location of my ads, my earnings tripled overnight. It really freaked me out. I had no idea that just moving an ad a couple inches would have such a dramatic effect. The diagram to the right (from Google) provides some good starting point for what locations work and don’t.

3. Section Targeting

This was another tweak I made that made a noticeable difference in earnings. Basically “section targeting” is telling Google what text on your site to look at when deciding what ads to show. Google is pretty good at figuring this out if you don’t do this, but if you have a lot of stuff going on in your sidebars and footer sections, it is probably worth experimenting with. It is very easy to implement. You only need to use this tag…

to tell Google to start, and this tag…

…to tell them to stop. I just added a text widget at the top of my post for the start tag and after the content for the end tag.

4. Who Sees Ads Plugin

This is a great plugin that allows you (as the name suggests) choose which visitors see which ads. There are lots of criteria that you can select, so you can specify that Search Engine users see a particular Adsense unit when regular readers see something else. I have found that search engine visitors click Adsense ads a lot more than regular readers. I still show some Adsense to regular readers, but I focus my energy on the visitors from search engines – this plugin makes this very easy.

5. Changed the colors

When Adsense first came out, people said to make the colors as loud and ugly as possible to draw attention to them. Next I heard that the best thing to do was to blend them into the site. Of the two methods I think that blending works a little better, and definitely looks a lot better! But, I have a slight variation of that has worked even better for me. Currently I have have most of my links set to a lighter blue color. I used to have many of my Adsense ads match that, but I saw a nice increase when I changed the Ad titles to the old standard Link Blue. I feel that visually it is a complement rather than a match. It stands out a little bit more, but doesn’t look bad either – IMO…

6. Wrote articles people are searching for

This might seem unrelated, but it is very important. If you are like most bloggers, you have a regular readership and you have readers from the search engines. For some reason, a lot of bloggers just don’t give much respect to search engine readers and don’t really try to reach out to them other than trying to “convert” them to a regular reader. I approach things a little bit differently, rather than getting frustrated at the fact that so many search engine visitors don’t come back, I started to embrace it. I realized that my main goal of this site was to help people, so why should I care if they only visit once or on a daily basis if they are getting helped?
So while I very much appreciate and value my regular readers, I also understand that I can help those who find the site via a search engine. I started doing keyword research to see what people were looking for in the search engines. If there are people searching to find the highest paying jobs without a degree, I want to help them find out! What happened for me as I started to become more conscious of what people were searching for was that I started getting more search engine traffic – which of course leads to higher earnings from Adsense.

7. Added a Google search bar

This is a no-brainer. Google is the master of search, so you can bet that their search capability on your site is going to be better than the default WordPress search tool. By installing this, you will help your visitors find the information that they are looking for on your site and make some extra cash in the process. When the search results (from the websites you choose) are displayed they have the standard Google ads present, just like normal Google search results.

8. Hooked Google Analytics up with Adsense

A few months ago, Analytics started allowing the option to integrate your Adsense data. This has been so helpful for me. It provides webmasters with a wealth of information about earnings. It is simple to see which articles are making the most money, which keywords are yielding the most, what sites send the most valuable traffic, and a whole lot more. If you use Adsense, don’t pass this one up.

9. Tested, re-tested, and tested again…

When running Adsense tests, I typically let them run for a month in order to make sure they are very thorough. I have a calendar that I use to mark down when I make changes and what changes I make. Then when the test is complete I compare CPM and eCPM rates to see what performed better. A/B split testing is a better method when possible, but for certain tests is just isn’t possible or practical. But either way, if you want to make more money with Adsense, experimenting and testing is a must!

SEO tips for blogs

It will take a while to get a decent amount of traffic from the search engines. The search engines do not like NEW websites. They like more established sites that have a lot of people linking to them, hence proving that they are reputable. This is why getting links from other bloggers, directories, other web sites that have a good reputation in the search engines’ eyes is very important. As your blog begins to grow by having more pages and more links the search engines will begin to send you more and more traffic. This is a good thing!! But, as I mentioned earlier, they are very wary of new websites – so time will be your ally when it comes to the search engines.

SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an science/art (depending on who you ask) that focuses on getting your website or blog to the top of the search engine listings. Being at the top of Google’s results for any decent keywords can be a great source of traffic and the greatest part about it is that it is FREE TRAFFIC!!!
I am not going to get deep into SEO much here, there are far more thorough books about it (i.e. SEOBook) but as your blog grows you should try to learn more about it, as it will only help you by knowing more. Just like most of the things you will learn while blogging, you don’t need to be an expert at it – just having a working knowledge will provide great results.
The thing to remember about the search engines (especially Google) is that they are trying to create a perfect system where any searcher can find exactly what they want. Google wants to display the most relevant websites to their searchers. They will never have a perfect system, but they probably won’t stop trying. If you can keep this in mind, it will be very helpful when you are trying to optimize your blog. Don’t waste your time trying to trick them, they will figure it out and will punish you for it. Just focus on making it very clear to them what your site is all about and writing great content for your reader and the rest will take care of itself.
So, let’s get to some SEO. These are some of the most important (in my opinion) pieces of SEO that every beginner should know. If you do these right, you will be much better off than most people who don’t know anything about SEO.

1. Title Tags

This may be the single most important part of on-page SEO. The title tag of your website is what shows up in the top of your browser window. It is also one of the most important determining factors that the search engines use to determine what your site is about.

In the above picture you can see that the title tag is “Christian Personal Finance – Financial help, debt help…” You WILL want to make sure that your title tags contain the keywords that you want to rank for in the search engines. If your site is about rock climbing, you will not want to have “welcome to Bill’s blog” in the title tags. Something better would be “Rock climbing 101 | the best rock climbing techniques”

2. Anchor Text

Anchor text – the text that people use when linking. For instance, if I created a link for a great search engine you can see that the link will go to Google. “great search engine” is the anchor text. The anchor text is a big deal, because it tells the search engines what other sites say your site is about. Google really places a lot of importance on what words are in the anchor text. Obviously, you will not be able to control how other people link to your site all of the time. But, for those times that you can, you should use your keywords when possible. Linking to other pages and posts on your website, directory submissions, blog carnivals, and your signature line in forums all may be good places to make sure you get your keywords in your anchor text.

3. Keyword Research

If you are trying to get traffic from search engines, it is always a good idea to know what people are searching for before you start writing. I often use Aaron Wall’s keyword tool and run some keyword ideas through it to get estimates of how many people are searching for them.

4. Get links

We already lightly discussed the importance of links coming into your blog. Other that the great benefit they play in improving your search rankings, they also send visitors to your site. It is an obvious benefit, but often overlooked by people focusing on SEO. If you get a link from a blog that gets a lot of visitors, you could see a huge traffic spike from it. If you get links from lots of blogs, you could and will see visitors coming from most of them. Maybe not a bunch, but as you get more and more links, you will see more visitors coming. The bottom line about link-building is that you have to create something great that people want to link to. If you can consistently do that, many other things will fall into place.

How to get traffic to your blog

So now are getting to the point of this article where I start sharing everything I have learned over the last couple years about blogging. So, if you are like most, you want to create a blog so that others can read what you have to say. Sadly, people will not find your blog (in the beginning anyway) unless you do a little legwork. These are some of the things I did to get traffic and some that I still do. The first thing I suggest doing is writing a few great articles about your topic and feature them in your sidebar. Then I would start working on generating traffic, because you not only want traffic, but you want returning traffic as well.

Guest Posting!!

I think this is one of the best ways to start getting some quick traffic. Almost every blog I know allows guest posts (even this one) – and almost every one of those does not discriminate. What I mean is that most bloggers (that I know anyway) will accept or reject a guest post based on it’s quality, not on whether they know the person or not. This provides a great opportunity for a newbie to write an article that could be seen by 20,000 readers. I don’t know of any other method that could bring traffic as quick. I must admit, I could still do more guest posting myself. I have been pleased with the results in the past. The key is to write a great article – don’t hold back your best stuff. I have seen people grow their blogs very quickly by giving some of their best articles away as guest posts. Also, only submit unpublished content as a guest post. If it has already been published, then the blog that is allowing you to guest post won’t get any search engine traffic for that article. But there are places to republish your articles you have already published – we will get to that in a minute…

Sign up for blog community sites

Just a few off the top of my head are mybloglog.com, technorati.com, and blogcatalog.com. Look for other blogs in your niche and join their networks and ask to become their friends. Networking with some of your fellow bloggers here will send a few visitors your way and is a good way to get started.

Submit to Blogcarnivals

One of the best things beginning bloggers can do is to sign up for blogcarnivals. At this site you can submit articles that you wrote on your blog to be included in a list of articles by the hosting blog. It is kind of like “open mic night.” If you have a good article with a good title, you can get some good traffic from blogcarnivals, not to mention incoming links from other related sites.

Join Directories

If I were starting a blog today, one of the first things I would do is Google “whatever topic I want to blog about” + “directory” This should return a list of web directories about your topic. Getting added to these directories will only help. You may not get a lot of traffic from them, but ultimately they will help you get more traffic from the search engines. A few of the more valuable ones to get you started…

• Yahoo Directory
• BOTW.org
• DMOZ.org
• Blogged.com
• JoeAnt.com
• Greenstalk.com
• Familyfriendlysites.com

Blog Commenting

One of the absolute best ways for new blogs to get traffic is just to comment on other blogs. Commenting with a thoughtful and provocative response will often send a few visitors your way. The blogging community is generally a very social community and those who are active in the community often reap the rewards of it.

Forum Commenting

Becoming involved in forums related to your topic and having a link to your blog in the signature line can send a few visitors. Google “your topic” and “forums” and you are sure to find a few. Just don’t be annoying and go in just to promote yourself. People can see that from a mile away. The new age of the internet (aka Web 2.0) is very much a “give and you shall receive” environment. If you seek to give and be a benefit before seeking your own rewards, you will be much better off.

Linking to other blogs

I don’t know what it is, but everyone wants to know when someone is talking about them. So it is with blogs. When people link to my site, I get a notification and often go check out who linked to me and what the context was. I have had some good relationships form just from this.

Create Squidoo pages

Squidoo.com, InfoBarrel.com, Hubpages.com,  and a handful of others are sites that allow you to build a simple page about a topic. You can do it very quick and the pages often rank well in the search engines. If you build a page that gets a little bit of traffic and have links coming back to your site, you will catch some of those visitors. If that weren’t good enough, many of them allow you to earn money from your articles as well.

Article submissions

Submit articles to article submission sites. These sites collect articles and most allow a bio-section that can include a link back to your blog. Here are a few that are worth looking into…

• ezinearticles.com
• goarticles.com
• articledashboard.com
• buzzle.com
• articlecity.com

How I make money with this blog

When I go to family functions or social events I often get a blank stare when I explain what I do for a living. I think people understand the part that I write articles and put them on a website, but when it comes to making money from it, they don’t get it. In this section I will lay it out and hopefully it will help bring some clarity…

CPC Ad Networks

There are a few different ad networks that I use on CPF. The most successful one has been Google’s Adsense program. Basically what they do is read the article that I write and find ads that are relevant to it and display them next to the article. The great thing about it is that by having extremely relevant ads, it actually can be quite beneficial to the readers as well.
For example, if I write an article explaining what an IRA was, but didn’t mention where you could open one, Adsense would likely be displaying ads of places to open an IRA. So as a reader, if I read that article and decided that I did want to open an IRA, the ads would be providing options that the article did not. I am currently doing a few tests with another CPC network called Chitika. Apparently, you can use it in conjunction with Adsense. The jury is still out, but I am interested to see how it compares to Adsense. All things considered, I have found that if optimized correctly, Adsense really can work well. I will explain more about how to optimize it in sections below.

CPM Ad Networks

While Adsense pays on a click basis (CPC), I use other ad networks that pay by the total # of impressions (CPM). At the beginning, these networks didn’t produce much income, but as the traffic grows CPM networks seem to work well in conjunction with Adsense. I use (or have used) ContextWeb, AdClickMedia, Adbrite, Adify, BuzzLogic, and Casale Media. Each has their own strengths and weaknesses and may be suitable for one kind of a site and not another.

Affiliate Product Sales

Basically an example of an affiliate sale would be if you sold lawn mowers and I referred a customer to you, if they purchased you would pay me back a % of the sale for referring them. There are a million options for this on the internet now. The main programs I use are

• Amazon’s Affiliate program
• FlexOffers
• Commission Junction
• Shareasale
• E-Junkie
• LinkShare

There are many others, but these are a few of the more popular ones available.

(Added 10/20/10 – I recently found out about a new site called Viglink which allows you to automatically turn all our links on your site to affiliate links. I am testing it out and am pretty excited about it since it greatly simplifies the process of adding affiliate links.)
I have a very strong policy about honest recommendations. I give my honest opinions about products that I find regardless of how it will affect affiliate sales. For example, I wrote about Cash Crate and updated the article to show what I didn’t like about them. Because Cash Crate has such a generous referral program, I know some people making lots of money from it, but I just don’t feel comfortable recommending it since I had a bad experience using it.

On the other hand there are products like ING Direct, Ebates, Perkstreet Financial, Swagbucks.com, and Sharebuilder that I recommend and also have some sort of affiliate or referral program as well. These are what I love because I can help readers by pointing them to good resources and tools that have helped me and get paid in the process. I know some people don’t have a problem promoting anything that will pay them, but I just can’t, in good conscience, recommend something to someone that I don’t genuinely believe will help them.

Direct Ad Sales

I also sell ad space directly to advertisers. This hasn’t provided much income for me yet and may or may not even be worth my time. I know that in certain niche markets direct ad sales can work out very well, but thus far it hasn’t been a big money maker on CPF.

How long does it take to make money from a blog

The second question that people normally ask after, “how do I make money with a blog?” is, “how long is it going to take?”. Well, let me just say this, if you are looking for a fast way to make money, blogging isn’t it. It takes time and hard work. As you can see from the chart below it took me a long time before the trend started moving upward.
But, for more than a year I was working at it about 10 hours a week. And don’t forget I didn’t know anything about blogging, advertising, getting traffic, etc when I started. So, if you know that ChristianPF is a blog, then you have a head start on me. Also, you have the wonderful privilege of reading this article where I am going explain most of the things that I did to help create that upward trend seen below – that I didn’t know the first year.

Blog earnings visualized

From other people I know who make a decent amount from their blogs, this curve seems to be typical. While the first year didn’t yield much income, it was crucial for the second year to be able to. While I wish I could tell you that you could jump right ahead to where the income starts increasing quicker, but I just don’t think it is likely. There are some tips in this article that I wish I would have known at the beginning and I think they will make things go a lot quicker, but there is no getting around the fact that it is going to take time to get there. But just like anything, the more you put in, the more you get out. The two keys are consistency and a willingness to learn. Without them, I would say that it will be very difficult to make money with your blog.

How to setup a self-hosted blog

If you are going to be using one of the first three options above, you can skip this section.
If you are serious about blogging and are looking for the best way to customize your blog’s look and other features, then getting a self-hosted blog from WordPress.org is probably the best way to go. It is currently the top choice for most bloggers. It does require more work up front and does have small costs associated with it: buying a domain name ($10/year) and hosting your blog ($10/month).
One of the big advantages is that you can use your own domain name (i.e. yourblog.com). While this might not seem like a big deal, it is a lot easier for people to remember yourblog.com rather than yourblog.blogspot.com which is what you will be given if you use Blogger.
I will warn you, being a non-techie myself, this took me some time figuring out how to get my self-hosted site set up. WordPress.org has a great step-by-step guide for getting you set up. While it is more work on the front end, I am really glad I got good advice and did this at the beginning, than having to do it now.

Pick a Domain Name

1. You should start by purchasing a domain name. Domain Samurai is a great tool that will help you enter in a keyword and then find a bunch of related domains that are still available. I would suggest going to for a .com rather than a .info or .us or anything else for that matter. It is just too easy for people to get confused. A .com is always going to hold more value than any other extension. For a simpler tool, just go to psychicwhois.com and find an open one. 2. Once you get it picked out, you need to find somewhere to purchase it. I bought my first few domains at GoDaddy.com and have bought the remaining ones from my hosting companies. While GoDaddy is about one of the biggest names out there, I can’t say that I recommend them because of some of their advertising campaigns that they run. I now recommend just buying the domain and hosting from Hostgator as it will make the whole process simpler. But if you already have a host, then Namecheap is a good and cheap way to buy a domain.

Pick a host for your blog

The webhost is the company that you pay to store all of your files for your blog. There are also a million web hosting companies out there. I don’t suggest just looking for the cheapest one, because a lot of these companies are not very reliable and your site might be down quite a bit. I like to go with the bigger companies who have a longer track record and are more established.
They may cost a dollar or two more a month when you are starting out and it is well worth it. I have hosted my websites with Dreamhost from the beginning, mostly because I knew a lot of people using them and I got a hosting package for about $7.00 a month.
I still host most of my websites at Dreamhost, but have moved this site to MediaTemple. The main reason was that since my livelihood now depended on the website I wanted a higher level of service from my hosting company. MediaTemple has been great in that regard, but as always it comes with a price. I am currently paying $150 a month for hosting with them.
(Added 01-05-10 – I am currently in the process of buying a website that is hosted on BlueHost, and after digging around the backend quite a bit, I am starting to think they are a better choice than Dreamhost. Their prices are slightly lower than Dreamhost, but they seem to have things a little better organized and create an easier experience for new users. I haven’t dealt with their customer service yet, so I can’t comment on that yet, but my overall experience so far leads me to like them a bit more than Dreamhost. For what it’s worth.)
(Added 05-04-10 – After using Bluehost a bit more and calling their customer service reps, I can safely say that I definitely like them more than Dreamhost. Just the fact that they have phone support gives them a leg up – but the rep I spoke with was very helpful. So Bluehost gets my recommendation for beginner hosting.)
(Added 04-04-11 – After more and more frustrating experiences with MediaTemple’s customer service I started looking for another host that I could scale up with. I still really like Bluehost – especially for the price, but the fact that they only offer shared hosting makes me hesitant about hosting my sites that pay my mortgage each month. After looking at Hostgator‘s site it became very clear that they are a host that you can start with for as cheap as $4/m and they also offer much more thorough hosting packages as your site grows. I had heard great things about them from others, so I figured I would check them out. I called them up and asked a bunch of questions and I was surprised to find out that even though they cost a fraction of what MediaTemple costs, they have some features that MediaTemple didn’t.I opened an account with HostGator and used the chat feature to get help 2 different times and I was very pleased with their knowledge and helpfulness each time. Honestly, I was so impressed that I am getting started on moving many of my sites over to Hostgator. I will let you know how things progress…)

Hosting Companies I’ve Used

Company
As Cheap as…	$3.96/m	$6.95/m	$8.95/m	$20/m
Notes	I started hosting with Hostgator after being increasingly frustrated with MediaTemple. From my experience their customer service seems to be far better than any other host I have used. I have been so impressed with their customer service that I am in the process of moving many of my sites over to them.	I host a few of my sites with Bluehost and I have had a really good experience with them. They are cheap and have great phone support, the only downside is that they one have one hosting package – which is fine for small-medium sites, but not so good for bigger blogs.	I started with Dreamhost and still have a few sites hosted there. I was happy with them for the price, but I always longed for phone support and they don’t really offer it. If you decide to use them, I have a coupon code you can use for 25% off… just enter “Christianblog” as the promo code.	$20/mI currently host this site with MediaTemple. Starting at $20/m they aren’t cheap, and they have been great in terms of site uptime, but I am becoming more and more dissappointed with their customer service.

I worked a deal out for you guys – if you decide to go with Hostgator, just use our 25% off Hostgator promo code: “ChristianPF” and it will knock 25% off for you.

Blogging basics

I am going to try to boil this down to the essentials. There are whole books written on this subject, so I am not going to try to cover everything here. If you are looking for a good book about blogging for beginners, I suggest reading Darren Rowse’s “31 Days To A Better Blog”. But for a quick, bottom-line version keep reading…

What is a blog?

A blog is short for “weblog”. Basically, it is just a website that has entries listed in reverse chronological order. The original idea behind it was to be a online journal or diary that was updated daily (or as frequently as the writer chose). Over the last decade many software programs and blogging platforms have been created to make the process VERY EASY. As the blog writer, depending on which platform you use, you can just type your entry, press submit and it shows up on your blog for the world to see. Most bloggers don’t know any programming languages and are not “techies.” Starting a blog is one of the easiest ways out there to start a website. If you haven’t started one yet, why not try it? It can be very quick to set up and can be completely free.

Is it easy to start a blog?

It is very easy. Even if there are steps along the way that are confusing, there are plenty of resources to get the help you need. There are over 20 million blogs in existence, so it can’t be that difficult.

How much does it cost to blog?

There are many services that allow you to start a blog for free (see below). I suggest using one of the free services to get a basic feel for blogging and “get your feet wet.” Once you decide you want to stick with it and that you want to make money with your blog, I suggest moving up to a self-hosted blog (see below). Anyone who is really trying to make money with a blog will probably be more successful with a self-hosted blog. Getting a self-hosted blog may not be free, but still can be VERY inexpensive. You will need to pay for nothing more than a domain name ($10) and web-hosting (as cheap as a few bucks a month).

Getting a blogging platform

All 4 of the options listed are free. The first 3 options are the easiest, but the are also limited on features. If you are just trying to make an extra few hundred dollars from your blog, these options could work. But if you are really serious about trying to make good money from your blog, I recommend self-hosting your blog (which we talk about in the next section…).
Tumblr.com – This is probably the simplest blogging platform to use, but it also is the probably the least customizeable. So, it might be something good to start with, but it would be more difficult to build an income-generating website with it.
Blogger.com – Blogger is also very good, easy to set up, owned by Google, you can customize the theme, and the domain name includes “.blogspot.com” (in some people’s opinion a little less professional). Blogger continues to become more customizeable and currently has a lot more options than they did a few years ago.
WordPress.com – I like wordpress.com they are completely free, easy to set up, you can customize the theme, but other customizations are limited, domain name includes “.wordpress.com”.
WordPress.org – Wait, what is the difference between wordpress.com and wordpress.org? To put it simply WordPress.com is where you will go to set up a basic, easy blog with limited features. WordPress.org is where you will go to get a self-hosted wordpress blog. If you get to the point where you are serious about blogging and really want to make some money with it, you need to self-host your blog. Now I should mention that you don’t actually ever have to visit wordpress.org, if you use Hostgator as your host, they will be able to help you install wordpress on your selfhosted blog. 

4 Steps to Get Started Blogging in 10 Minutes!

4 Steps to Get Started Blogging in 10 Minutes!

This is just a quick cliffnotes version for committed bloggers only. These recommendations aren’t best suited for those dabbling with blogging, but they are the things that I would do if I had to do it all over again.

1. Find a domain name

• Go to psychicwhois.com and search until you find a domain name that is available (green ones are open, red ones are taken).
• If possible aim for one that has at least of the keywords you would like to be found in the search engines for.

2. Get a domain name and web hosting package from Hostgator (my recommended host)

• Head over to Hostgator and select either the “Hatchling” or “Baby” plan.

• Then make sure to register the domain that you found in the first step.
• Next enter “ChristianPF” as a promo code and it will knock 25% off for you.

• Now follow the remaining steps to complete your purchase.

3. Install WordPress (with a little help)

• Either watch the video above for detailed instructions or just jump on the phone or use the chat box with Hostgator.
• When you get them on the line just tell them that you want to install WordPress on your blog.
• They should hold your hand and walk you through the process (if they don’t please email me). When complete ask them for the WordPress login information.

4. Login to WordPress

• Once they give you the login information you can go to http://www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin and login.
• Now that you are logged in to WordPress you can begin making changes to your site and or publish your first post.

Boost Your Webpage – Get Revenue Generating Blogs

Blogs”; the most exploited medium by the internet world, was initialized as personal experience post. People shared their individual saga online and within no time, it became the most coveted medium of communication thus encouraging all and sundry to share their own stories. Banking on the popularity of blog posts, web marketers started using this medium for promoting products/services online. It would ideally include a written content about the product/service in descript and experiences associated with it by different people. Thus the era of boosting web traffic through blog posting started.
Blog posts are such reliable source of promotion that they can boost traffic to the extent of making you a millionaire within few months on the pre-condition that they are taken advantage of wisely.
There are certain fundamental rules for boosting traffic through blog posts.
You have to remember that blogging is a continuous process. Therefore, if you have posted a limited blog post and you desire a huge traffic inflow, then you are in for disappointment. The thumb rule for blogging is that it necessitates regular inflow. Consequently, you need to keep on updating content repeatedly, thus keeping the visitors concern alive. Added to it, enclosure of keywords is undeniably going to amplify the search engine rating broadly. Do not forget to add links as these links are a mode of encouraging link marketing, thus boosting your web page invariably. Links are a great medium of magnifying web traffic as they augment means of communication between the blogger and the user, thus formulating active participation by the users.
Blogging also requires you to be precise, informative and updated about data relevant to your content for providing regular feed. This keeps the readers hooked onto your website. Once you manage to engage the visitors, it becomes easy to advertise your website further.
Blogging is the best means to amplify your website space thus making it an imperative entity in the e-retailing scenario. Added to it is the benefit of provisioning innumerable links within the leveraging innumerable links within the website owing to the presence of unlimited blogs, with each of them boasting of their own link.
Blogging is an ideal technique to boost your web traffic but it solely depends on your content, promotion and writing skills. A blog should appear more like a conversation rather than a school chapter narration. It should have a personal and informative appeal.
Plus point of ease of blogging is that creating blog post is the easiest thing to do online as it does not require any technical expertise like creating codes aka HTML or any other. Therefore, even an internet novice can carry on blogging uninterrupted.
If the blogging goes right, unending traffic is diverted to your web page thus helping you engender high revenues. Therefore, an expert recommendation would be to initiate blogging to get loaded.

SEO Tips and Tricks - Popular SEO Tools

Search Engine Optimization is the best way to promote your website or blog. Every SEO executive will advise you about the useful SEO tools to make your optimization simple. You can find a lot of SEO tools that will solve your problems in few minutes. We are discussing SEO tools which are commonly used and most visited by webmaster/bloggers .

Google Webmaster - Google webmaster tool is a free service by Google for webmasters. It allows webmasters to check indexing status and optimize visibility of their websites.

It has tools that let the webmasters:

• Submit your blog/website and check a sitemap
• Check and set the crawl rate, and view statistics about how Google bot accesses a particular site
• Generate and check a robots.txt file. It also helps to discover pages that are blocked in robots.txt by chance.
• List internal and external pages that link to the site
• See what keyword searches on Google led to the site being listed in the SERPs, and the click through rates of such listings
• View statistics about how Google indexes the site, and if it found any errors while doing it
• Set a preferred domain (e.g. prefer example.com over www.example.com or vice versa), which determines how the site URL is displayed in SERPs

Google Analytics - This is also provided by Google easy to use. You can use this tool free that will record your website visitors information, clicks, pages viewed per visit, bounce rates and average time spent in the blog. There are 3 elements in this tool: search traffic, keywords and content performance.Submit your blog or website to Google Analytics today and track your visitors. (e.g. BlogsDaddy.Com has 414 sites linking in)

Alexa - Alexa Internet, Inc. is a California-based subsidiary company that is known for its toolbar and Web site. Alexa Internet was founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle and Bruce Gilliat. You can measure the popularity of your blog or website. Alexa could only promise accuracy for the top 100,000 sites. This will tell you site linking also. 

Google Adwords Keywords Tool - This is a Google tool that determines the keywords of competitors through their PPC campaigns. The great thing about Google Adwords Keywords Tool is that is an online tool with a lot of useful features.You can use KeyComplete tool also for keyword research.

Google PageRank Checker - You can check Page rank of the website with this tool. In order to check Pr of a single web site, web page or domain name, please submit the URL of that web site, web page or domain name to the form and click "Check PR" button.

IWEBTOOL.Com -  IWEBTOOL.Com has several tools. It has Google PageRank Prediction which "predicts" ranking in Google; Link Popularity which counts the links of a domain on search engines; Website Speed Test which measures the time of site loading ; Ping Tool which is used to test the presence of an active connection etc.

CSS Brick Style Label Cloud Widget For Blogger Blog

Last time I shared CSS attractive style label cloud widget for blogger blog with different style. Today, I present another widget with different design. This is also same trick (as per previous post) but with different style. I used CSS for this widget check image below as a demo. Follow given below steps to add it to your blog. It's so simple.

Screenshot: CSS Brick Style Label Cloud Widget For Blogger Blog

How To Add Brick Style Labels Cloud In Blogger Using CSS

• Go To Blogger Dashboard > Design > Edit HTML > Expand Widget Templates (For New Interface Templates > Edit HTML) 
• Backup Your Template Before Making Any Changes
• Click (Ctrl + F) Search Give Below Code

]]></b:skin>

• Copy The Code shown below and paste Before/Above it

/*-----Custom Labels Cloud widget by www.BlogsDaddy.com----*/

.label-size{

margin:0 2px 6px 0;

padding: 3px;

text-transform: uppercase;

border: solid 1px #C6C6C6;

border-radius: 3px;

float:left;

text-decoration:none;font-size:10px;color:#666;}

.label-size:hover {

border:1px solid #6BB5FF;

text-decoration: none;-moz-transition: all 0.5s ease-out;

-o-transition: all 0.5s ease-out;

-webkit-transition: all 0.5s ease-out;

-ms-transition: all 0.5s ease-out;

transition: all 0.5s ease-out;

-moz-transform: rotate(7deg);

-o-transform: rotate(7deg);

-webkit-transform: rotate(7deg);

-ms-transform: rotate(7deg);

transform: rotate(7deg);

filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Matrix(

M11=0.9961946980917455, M12=-0.08715574274765817, M21=0.08715574274765817, M22=0.9961946980917455, sizingMethod='auto expand');

zoom: 1;

}

.label-size a {

text-transform: uppercase;

float:left;

text-decoration: none;

}.label-size a:hover {

text-decoration: none;

}

How to Add Labels Gadget In Blogger Blog

• First Of All, Go To Blogger Dashboard
• Click On Layout Tab
• Now Click On Add Gadget Button
• Add Labels Gadget
• Unchecked Show Number Of Post Per Label And Save

• Its Done, Check Your Blog Now. Enjoy :)

If you need our help then just leave your comments below, I am happy to help you. See you with more tutorials & tricks, Happy Blogging and Stay Blessed.

1 0 Things To Do Before Applying For Adsense Account

Every blogger needs Google Adsense publisher account. Because last month I survey bloggers about the money making ways that they use for their blogs AdSense is the number one method for making money online. It is a fast and simple way for bloggers to display ads that are relevant to their blog content.
*****************************************************
AdSense is a ‘contextual’ advertising program run by Google Inc.that allows publishers in the Google Network of content sites to serve automatic text, image, video, and rich media adverts that are targeted to site content and audience.

AdSense is how I earn around 65% of my income as a full time blogger and I would extremely recommend it as a way of monetizing a blog – especially for those just starting out.In Q1 2011, Google earned US$2.43 billion ($9.71 billion annualized), or 28% of total revenue, through Google AdSense.

Making money with AdSense is easy, but when reviewing the applications Adsense team get, they've noticed a few common mistakes. If you want to get approved Adsense account the first time around, then please read following tips carefully.These tips will help you a lot for getting Google Adsense account.

Things To Do Before Applying For Adsense Account?

1. Website/Blog - If you want to participate in Google Adsense program, then you should have a blog or website.To display Google ads, you need administrative access to the blog or website you submit for AdSense in order to place JavaScript ad code on your blog.If you are new to blogging era and you don't have any money to purchase domain and hosting presently.Try free blogging platform provided by Google called blogger.

This is free service.You can setting up and publishing your own blog.Blogger.com is very easy to use and their is a lot of features available for bloggers.You can upload your own XML template and you can customize the template also.There are many websites available which are providing free blogger templates. Blog design is also matter for Adsense approval.Make clean and beautiful blog.

2. Meta Tags - Traffic is the key to get success online. So, please before applying for Adsense get some traffic for your blog.You have to add meta tags (Title, Keywords, Description etc).If you have knowledge about it and you have done it already then leave this section.Others should add meta tags below <head> of your blog template.Check the code given below:

<meta content='YOUR BLOG TITLE' name='title'/>

<b:if cond='data:blog.metaDescription != &quot;&quot;'>

<meta expr:content='data:blog.metaDescription' name='description'/>

</b:if>

<b:if cond='data:blog.url == data:blog.homepageUrl'><meta content='YOUR BLOG DESCRIPTION' name='description'/></b:if>

<meta content='KEYWORDS HERE' name='keywords'/>

<meta content='AUTHOR NAME' name='author'/>63 characters With Spaces

<meta content='INDEX,FOLLOW' name='robots'/>

<meta content='index, follow' name='googlebot'/>

<meta content='text/html; charset=UTF-8' http-equiv='content-type'/> 

• Replace This With Your Blog Title (63 Characters With Spaces) - YOUR BLOG TITLE
• Replace This With Your Blog Description (156 Characters With Spaces) -  YOUR BLOG DESCRIPTION
• Replace This With Keywords [ Each One Separated By A Comma and 256 Characters With Spaces] - KEYWORDS HERE
• Replace This With The Author Name : AUTHOR NAME 

3. Length Of Blog Post - Always try to make your blog post lengthy because generally the search engines like content at least 500-750 words long.When you are writing a blog post then always check grammar mistakes.

4. Blog Traffic - A better question that you should ask yourself is whether or not your blog has the right amount of traffic to start monetizing it with Adsense.As a result you should wait until you have 350 unique visitors per day. In fact, I suggest even more.

5. Useful Widgets - It is better if you are using some useful widgets on your blog.These widgets can help you to get Inorganic traffic that you get from social media websites like - Facebook, Twitter and Google+ etc.I am sharing some widgets below which you should try on your blog:

• Subscription Box
• Facebook Like Box
• Social Sharing Buttons
• Twitter Follower Button
• Google+ Author Badge, Page Badge

6. Pages Required For Adsense - Many bloggers ask me,"What pages are required for Google Adsense?".The answer is About Us, Contact Us, Disclaimer and Privacy Policy pages are important.Get information about "How to make a privacy policy page?".If you don't have knowledge how to create disclaimer page then I have solution for this also just click here and create this page.

7. Apply With Your Owned Domain - You must have your own domain name when you apply for a GA. You have to change your web address www.example.blogspot.com into www.example.com.You will get more benefits if you have your own domain.

• Where I Can Purchase Domain? - There are so many popular websites available, which are providing domain,hosting services.Just go to websites and register your domain name.Popular websites name given below:

1. www.mochahost.com
2. www.godaddy.com
3. www.hostgator.com
4. www.bigrock.com

8. Google Webmaster Tools - To help Google to index all your web pages in your blog, you should add sitemaps for your blogger blogs.Here's the proper guide How to submit all your blog posts sitemap to Google webmaster tool.

9. Write Quality Content - Always write quality content on your blog and never pick content from other blogs, Because this is a not professional way of blogging even Google is not like this also.You should publish 50-60 posts on your blog before applying for GA account. If you apply with 3-4 posts only on your blog, then you will not get GA according to me.

10. Domain Age - Domain age also matter if you are think of applying for an Adsense account.According to Google policies, your domain name must be 6 months old.But, if you huge traffic on your blog and you are getting daily unique visitors from search engines then no need to wait for 6 month because Google will approve your Adsense account.

Note - Use a valid email address and name when applying for GA account. If you need any other information regarding Google Adsense please use comment box below.I' m happy to help you.

Add Amazon Product Links to Blogger Posts

In this tutorial you will learn how to deep link a specific Amazon product directly into your Blogger posts so that the link will appear either on every post page or alternatively only on a selected post page. By deep linking a targeted Amazon product directly to your Blogger blog you can expect to increase your Amazon sales and to make extra money from Blogger. If you wish to learn more about adding Amazon widgets to your blog please refer to my earlier tutorial Make Money Add an Amazon Widget to Blogger


This tutorial provides you with a complete walk through of the process of adding Amazon product links to Blogger. I have rated the tutorial as moderate as it involves setting up the Amazon product link, converting the code and adding a block of code to your Blogger template. All these steps are within the capabilities of the average Blogger user provided you follow the step by step instructions below.

How to Deep Link an Amazon Product to Blogger Posts
This tutorial will show you how to add an Amazon Product Link at the foot of every post in your Blogger blog. If you want your link to appear only on a specific individual post page see Tips and Troubleshooting below for instructions.

Difficulty Level: Moderate

1. Sign in to your Amazon Associates account. If you are not a member sign up is free to both Amazon.com and Endless.com
   
2. Click on the Links and Banners tab
   
3. Under the Product Links heading choose the Add Product Links Now link
   
   
4. From the Product Links page choose your Product Category from the drop down list and enter your search keyword phrase to identify the product you wish to link to. Hit the Go button.
   
   
5. From the search results choose the individual product you will linking to by clicking on the Get Link button on the right hand side of the product
   
   
   
6. You will now be taken to the Customize and Get HTML code page.
   
   
   • Select Link Type
     By default both the product image and text link will display but you can customize it to display the image only or the text only by checking the box alongside these options
     
   • Customize Link
     Choose the appearance of your product. With or without a border. Choose color options to suit your blog. I suggest you keep the default setting for the link opening in a new window. Amazon lets you see a live preview of your product on the right so that you can make any adjustments before embedding the code into your blog.
   
   
7. Once you are satisfied with the product's appearance click on the highlight code button at the foot of the page and copy the HTML code for the Amazon Product Link.
   
8. Open a Javascript to HTML converter such as Centricle. Paste your code into the content window and press the Encode button
   
9. Highlight and copy the code that has been converted
   
10. Login to Blogger if not already logged in
    
11. Navigate to Layout > Edit HTML
    
12. Back up your Blogger template as a precaution
    
13. Check Expand Widget Templates box
    
14. There are several places you may wish your product link to appear. I have assumed for the purposes of this tutorial that you want it at the bottom of your post. Therefore find the following code in your template:
    
    

    <div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-3'/>

15. Directly below this line paste the converted Amazon HTML code
    
16. Click on Save Template
    
17. Click on View Blog to view your link at the foot of every Blogger post including the home page view.

Tips and Troubleshooting
If you are writing about a lot of different products on your blog you may need to place targeted Amazon product links on your Blogger individual post pages. To have the Amazon Product Link only appear on a specific post page follow these steps.

How To Add an Amazon Product Link to an Individual Blogger Post
Before you get started you will need to know the full URL address of your Blogger post. To get this navigate in a new window to the specific post page of your Blogger blog and copy the address from the address bar at the top of your browser

1. Follow steps 1 to 13 as per adding an Amazon Product Link to the foot of every Blogger post.
   
2. Find the following code:
   
   

   <div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-3'/>

3. Directly below this line paste the following code:
   
   

   <b:if cond='data:blog.url == "your blog post URL including http://"'>
   Paste your Amazon code here
   </b:if>

4. Replace "your blog post URL including http://" with the URL address of your blog post
   
5. Paste over "Paste your Amazon code here" with your converted Amazon HTML code
   
6. Click on Save Template
   
7. Click View Blog and navigate to the individual post page to see your Amazon Product Link at the foot of your Blogger post (Blogspot post)

In this tutorial you have learned how to add an Amazon Product Link to your Blogger posts (Blogspot posts). I have also shown you how to embed an Amazon Product Link directly into a specific Blogger post. By adding targeted Amazon product links to your Blogger blog you can expect to make extra money from your blog. I would love to hear from anyone about their experiences of adding Amazon widgets or product links to their Blogger blog so if you have the time please let me know how you get on.

Make Money With Adsense Keywords and Blogger

If you are new to blogging with Blogger (Blogspot) and wondering how to make money with Adsense this article is for you. If you have Google Adsense on your blog but are disappointed with the revenue generated so far then read on. Even if Google Adsense is performing well for you I am going to give you some tips that will mean you will earn extra money from Google Adsense.

Why Are Keywords So Important for Bloggers?
In order to make money from blogging with Blogger it is important first to understand the significance of keywords and keyword phrases. Via Google Adwords, the sister of Google Adsense, advertisers bid for keywords and keyword phrases. The more frequently these keyword terms are searched for the higher their value. That is why keyword phrases like make money or make money online which receive a huge number of monthly searches are top paying keywords and are worth so much to advertisers.


To make money with Google Adsense all you need do once your blog is receiving traffic is sign up with Google Adsense, receive a unique code and then place Google Adsense ads on your Blogger blog. These ad units are targeted automatically based on the keywords and keyword phrases which appear in the content of your posts. You get paid for every click on one of your Google Adsense ads. The amount you get paid is determined by the value of the keyword or keyword phrases used.

As a webpublisher it is important to be mindful when crafting your content that you use Google keywords and keyword phrases relevant to your blog's content. This does not mean that you stuff your posts with Google keywords to generate higher Google Adsense payments. In fact having too many keywords is known as keyword stuffing and could mean your blog is penalized by Google. A good rule of thumb is to have 3-5% of your content made up of your blog's keywords. A keyword density over 7% is too high and risks penalty.



Find The Best Google Keywords for Your Blog
These days many bloggers wanting to make money with Adsense build their blogs based on Google keywords. Their plan is to achieve first page positions on Google search pages for each of these keywords and keyword phrases. However, adopting this strategy from the outset would not be the case for most bloggers. Most of us start a blog about something we are interested in and then decide that we would like to make money with Google Adsense.

If Google keywords for your blog is not something that you have paid much attention to up to now then you may be surprised at what a difference it will make to your Google Adsense earnings and SERPs (search engine results page). Just by figuring out your keywords and emphasizing them in your blog posts you can expect to earn extra money with Google Adsense and Blogger. I did an exercise recently where I edited one of my earlier posts and added about 10 more keywords to the content. Not only did I move my article from about 60 in Google searches to 10 the revenue earned from Adsense for this article increased markedly too.

To determine what your keywords are for your blog you will need to conduct some research. Go to Google Adwords Keyword Tool and type in the topic of your blog. For instance if your blog is about making money online you would type in this phrase to receive other keywords that are related to your blog topic.

Try to identify about 10 to 15 Google keywords and keyword phrases that fit with your blog content. Print out this list and keep it handy so you can refer to it often when writing content for your blog.

Write an article around each of these Google keywords or keyword phrases. These 10 to 15 articles will become the backbone content of your blog. Research these articles by performing Google searches and reading what other bloggers who make it to the first couple of pages in the search engine results are writing about. Notice their keywords and keyword phrases, and the tags they have used. This research will help you identify two things:

• Any gaps not so well covered by fellow bloggers but relating well to your keywords. That will give you a nice opportunity to write a series of articles on the topic
  
• How other bloggers in your niche are tailoring their content for success and which keywords are performing well for them

Always write original content. Never copy another bloggers material. Despite being unethical to plagarize duplicated material is easy to identify and can mean that you get penalized by search engines like Google and run the risk of being banned from Google Adsense. My take on what is known as blog scraping is that if you need to copy what some else has written clearly you don't understand your blog topic well enough and you are probably better to write about something you do know something about. Your readers will see through you very quickly if you don't fully understand the depths of your blog topic.

Google Adsense Tips for Blogspot Bloggers (Blogger Bloggers)

• Add Your Main Keyword to Your Title Tag
  Make sure that your main keyword for each of your 10-15 articles forms part of your title tag as this is important if your article is to rank highly in search engine results. If you can use two keywords or keyword phrases all the better. You will note that I have added three keywords in my title: make money, Google Adsense and Blogger.
  
• Use the Main Keyword in the Body of Your Posts
  Make sure you use the main keyword throughout the body of your article. Ensure that your main keyword appears in the first and last paragraph of your post. There are keyword density tools available to help you check the ratio of keywords used.
  
• Make Sure You Tag Your Main Keyword
  Tagging your main keyword and other keywords and keyword phrases is also important if readers are to find your article. Your posts will do better in search engine results if they are appropriately tagged. And of course the better your blog is search engine optimized the more traffic your blog will receive and the greater the potential for Google Adsense revenue.
  
• Make Sure Your Blog is Search Engine Optimized
  Optimize your Blogger blog by adjusting your title tags and adding meta tags for better SEO. SEO is important as it generates search engine traffic and building traffic is paramount for high earnings from Google Adsense.
  
• Develop Backlinks for Your Blog
  Some of the factors that determine how high your articles will appear in search engine results are backlinks and the age of your blog. If you have some good backlinks to highly ranked websites your blog articles are likely to be promoted in search engine results. Use blog directories, forums, and comment on other blogs in your niche to build a good range of backlinks. Submit your best articles to article directories to generate traffic and links. Also submitting your article to social bookmarking sites like Digg and StumbleUpon can provide backlinks and boost traffic at the same time
  
• Give Your Old Blogger Posts a Keyword Makeover
  Go back through your previous blog posts and identify posts that are not receiving a lot of traffic. Read through them and look for opportunities to rewrite small portions of the content to insert keywords and keyword phrases. Check the tags too and add any keywords and keyword phrases that may help to boost traffic. Identify any posts that need to be rewritten from a slightly different angle and with more scope for the addition of keywords
  
• Publish Posts at Least 250-300 Words Long
  Check the number of your articles Google has indexed. Shorter articles can often be missed out particularly if your blog is only recently created. Plus shorter articles do not give enough scope for Google Adsense to necessarily know what keywords to target when serving ads.
  
• Optimize Google Adsense Placement, Size and Appearance
  Some locations for Google Adsense work better than others. Make sure you read up on Google Adsense placement as this will ensure you make the most money from your Adsense ads.
  
  Some Adsense ad unit sizes are better performers than others. My personal favorite is 336x280 ad unit which I use successfully on most of my blogs.
  
  Consider the appearance of your Adsense ad unit. Blend it in or make it stand out the choice is yours.

In today's article I have discussed how to make money with Google Adsense and Blogger. I have paid close attention to the use of keywords and keyword phrases in your content as these are the basis for the ads served up by Google. Included in this article are tips on how to locate and identify your keywords, increase your keyword density and use keywords effectively along with other Adsense tips.

Make Money Add an Amazon Widget to Blogger

In today's tutorial you will learn how to place an Amazon widget on your Blogger blog (Blogspot blog) to enable you to add a further income stream to your existing Blogger earnings.

Adding an Amazon widget to Blogger is not difficult. No change or very little change to your Blogger template is required. There is some time involved in setting up the widget itself and choosing the products to link to and customizing the look to match your blog however. This tutorial will walk you through the steps involved but first a few need to know facts about Amazon's affiliate program.


Important Details For Bloggers About Amazon's Affiliate Program

• Amazon have 2 referral structures: Classic Plan and Performance Plan
  
  
  • For the Classic Plan - A flat rate commission of 4% is paid
    
  • For the Performance Plan - A sliding scale between 4% and 8.5% commission is paid on general product items shipped. Consumer electronics is paid at a flat rate of 4%. Kindle, MP3,video on demand and game downloads are at the rate of 10%. View fee structure for Performance Plan
• Sell 7 items in a month and you will receive 6% commission on sales. Sell in excess of 30 items and receive referral fees at the rate of 6.5%
  
• Affiliates earn commission on the total of items shipped not just the first product bought
  
• Payment options are direct credit, check or Amazon Gift Certificate. There is a $15 charge for the issue of a check.
  
• Payment of referral fees is made once your account reaches $10 provided you have opted for the direct credit or Amazon Gift Certificate option. Otherwise it is $100 for a check (cheque)
  
• Amazon offer a choice of 17 different widgets
  
• Amazon also offer links and banners and an astore option

Earning Money from Amazon Widgets
Linking to Amazon products on your blog can generate significant income depending on your blog topic and the type of links you choose. I personally find that my sales are not always related to blogging despite the Amazon widget on this blog linking to books about blogging. However I would strongly suggest that you try to match the products offerred to the general content of your blog so that your links are targeted to your blog's audience. Another option is to add a generic Amazon widget such as the Deals Widget to snag those bargain hunters and impulse buyers from your readership.

Placing Amazon Widgets on Blogger
There are 17 different Amazon widgets to choose from. The decision about which widget is best will partly be determined by the type of blog you have and where you want to place the widget.

I have had some success with the Carousel Widget that I have on Blogspot Blogger Guide - another of my blogs. I have found under the header to be a prime location for this gadget and as it is displayed on every page the widget is getting maximum exposure. I have also had moderate success with a sidebar location using the I Recommend widget. I think it is true to say that you will need to experiment a bit to find the best type of widget for your blog.

How to Add an Amazon Widget to a Blogger Blogspot Blog

Difficulty Level: Easy to Moderate

1. Join Amazon's Referral Program and create an affiliate account at Amazon. You will need to supply your direct deposit details as Amazon charges to issue affiliate checks (cheques)
   
2. Once your affiliate registration is confirmed (this is a fast process) you will then be ready to start to create an Amazon widget for your blog. So go ahead and login to your affiliate account at Amazon and click on the widgets tab
   
3. Now comes the fun part - choosing a widget. Amazon currently have 17 different widgets to choose from. The Amazon help section is good and I suspect will answer most of your questions if you get stuck.
   
4. Choose your widget. For the purposes of this demonstration let's choose a Recommended Product Links widget. Click on the Add to Your Webpage button
   
5. From the drop down select a product line eg Cameras and Photo. Select a subcategory eg General Bestsellers. Click the Continue button.
   
   
6. Select the size of widget according to the location where it will be placed on your blog eg 160x600 in the sidebar of Blogger. Click on the Select This Size button at the right of the example widget
   
   
7. Now you will need to customize your widget. Click on Customize Link Appearance and enter link and text colors to suit your blog. Ensure that the widget opens in a new window unless you are quite happy for your readers to leave your blog. Leave this window open in the meantime as we will be returning
   
   
8. In a new window login to Blogger if not already logged in
   
9. Navigate to Layout > Page Elements
   
10. Click on Add Gadget in the sidebar and choose HTML/Javascript from the list of available gadgets
    
11. Copy the widget code which contains Amazon's tracking code and paste it into the content area of the gadget. Add a title if you wish. Click the Save button
    
12. Use the drag and drop feature to reposition your widgets in the sidebar in the order that you want them to appear. Save any changes
    
13. Click on View Blog and admire your new widget in the sidebar of your blog

Tips and Troubleshooting
Some placements of Amazon widgets will require tweaks to your Blogger template. For instance the Carousel widget which I mentioned earlier I inserted under the header in my blog. To place an Amazon widget or for that matter any widget below the header and above the first post in Blogger do the following:

1. Login to Blogger if not already logged in
   
2. Navigate to Layout > Edit HTML
   
3. Find the following line of code
   
   

   <b:section class='crosscol' id='crosscol' showaddelement='no'/>

4. Replace the no with yes and click the Save button
   
5. Navigate to Layout > Page Elements
   
6. You will see that you can now add a gadget below the header

In this tutorial you have learnt about adding Amazon widgets to a Blogger Blogspot blog in order to earn cash from referral fees. Most bloggers earn around 4 to 6.5% in commission for items shipped from Amazon. While not the best affiliate scheme Amazon referral fees can add up to tidy sum at the end of the month. I would recommend giving it a try. You will need to experiment to get the best fit of location and widget. Good luck and let me know how you get on.