Profitable Productive Blogging

I have never really done an audio or video post. I have considered doing video in the past, but never have gotten to it. I would like to start doing maybe several video posts a year and possibly several audio as well. What are your thoughts on video posting or any type of web-casting? Do you currently do video posts on you blog? Do you do any pod casting or other audio or video broadcasts personally or for your blog? Do any of you use Blog Talk Radio? later all and have a profitable and productive blogging day Get more profitable and productive information by Following me on Twitter , subscribing to my FEED , or clicking the links below to subscribe to my feed, bookmark my site, or add me to your favorites.

I have been reading a lot lately about the demographics of social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace. All of the news coming out lately is showing that the demographics are skewing more and more to the older age groups. This is kinda counter-intuitive for most people as the standard way of thinking is that younger people tend to be more tech savvy and spend more time online and social networking than older people do. Another article on CNN.com just today talked about how the fastest growing group on Facebook is women over 55. Now as an affiliate marketer and blogger information like this is critical to my marketing efforts. There is a site I check out for information on Facebook. It is a site called Inside Facebook and they track the growth of Facebook. The site is full of a ton of useful information for those of us that market on Facebook. If you do market on facebook you should check them out. later all and have a profitable and productive blogging day Get more profit...

How many times as a kid did you hear your parents remind you to say please and thank you? How many times have you as a parent said exactly the same thing? Why do so many people have problems saying a simple thanks? Are we so busy and distracted in our lives that we just don't think about it anymore? I can't tell you how many times in just the last several days where I have simply held a door, or when I stopped a cart from hitting a vehicle, helped pick a display knocked over by a child, and the person did not say a simple thanks. Oft times they are in such a hurry they quickly speed on their way and ignore the fact that a fellow human being just took some time to lend a hand. In our society we have become so quick to wine and moan when things don't go right, service is bad, or mistakes happen. Conversely we have become MUCH too slow in saying a thanks when things simply go right, service is exceptional, or someone lends a helping hand. Teach your kids to be friendly and...

Okay...It isn't just for lazy bloggers... How many of you have wanted to run a PPC advertising campaign for your blog or other online or offline venture, but you didn't know how to begin? Were you afraid of sinking a lot of money into an ad campaign with limited return? Well there is a company that offers a solution. You can connect your blog or any other business with readers and customers looking for your information, products, and services. A company called NetworkSolutions has a new program called PerformanceClicks! It is basically a one-stop website promotion solution for any small business from blogging to landscaping. They will do all the work for you. They will research keywords, analyze your website, create your ad copy, purchase keywords and report on your campaign. You can choose from two types of affordable, fully-managed pay per click marketing plans based on your budget and needs. They have pre-packaged plans that start from $125 a month all the way up to fully c...

Smorty is a blog advertising network along the lines of PayPerPost but with a bit of SocialSpark thrown in. I have used Smorty in the past for a few posts on some of my various blogs and really liked the payment setup as well as how they handled the posting requirements. The biggest drawback for me at the time was the community was small and the opps were limited. Because of this I gravitated to PPP and other mediums for earnings through posting and links. During this time PayPerPost became IZEA and launched SocialSpark. Well Smorty is not just sitting around being passed by SocialSpark and PayPerPost. They have launched a great new option for Smorty members. Smorty has a new Post Exchange Program that is growing the Smorty community to become stronger by helping each other. It aims to build a strong and ongoing inbound link structure and increase your online traffic. It is completely free to use and all approved blogs can participate. Post exchange works on a point based system. For ...

I just wanted to share a few free or low cost ideas on ways to market your online ventures offline. Many bloggers overlook the benefits of promoting offline as well. If you can implement some offline marketing strategies with little or no money that is even better. If you are trying to make money online you certainly don't want to be spending large sums of money offline it just isn't practical for the return you get. Free Offline Marketing Method #1 Do a Google search for customized ink pens, customized promotional items, or something along those lines. You will obviously get a ton of results. Just start clicking on some of the results focusing on sites that offer free samples, or that have a print catalog. In my experience you have the best luck with those. Remember you want free! Okay now that you have found a few go ahead and register with the site. You want them to send you their catalog in the mail. The reason why is that every month or so they also send free samples of fe...

Well, not all of them are free. You may have heard of VistaPrint and their free business card offers, but did you know that they also have some really good deals on premium printing services as well? If you are interested in the free stuff here are some things VistaPrint does offer for free. Getting some of their basic business cards made up for your blog is a great offline marketing tool. You can pass them out to friends and family or to people you meet. See the last one on the list? It is that time of year and if you or a child are graduating getting some free announcements is a great deal. Free Business Cards Free Rubber Stamps Free Sticky Notes Free Checks Free Logo Design Caricature Design Graduation Announcements In addition to the free stuff VistaPrint offers a wide array of printing services including: business cards, checks, rubber stamps, announcements, and car magnets! You can customize all of their products to your liking! Their premium printing services are very affordable...

Hah, great question. Follow the money.... No really if you don't like the article talk to my "manager" the number is 1-800-382-5968. ;)... This blog is about making money. It isn't about you liking me. That would be nice, and I'm a likable guy, but still not the point. It isn't even directly about gaining more readers, although that is to a point an indirect necessity. It is, when you get down to it, about the money. I blog from my passion . I write because I have a passionate motivation to make money online instead of working my a-s off for 40 years for some other guy. I have a great job so don't get me wrong but I am working extremely hard to replace it, which is a pretty high mark. I am passionate about my family time and being able to have freedom of location for that time. Therefore I am passionate about making money online. And thus I write from my passion. I don't ask that you like me or the means to my end. I may not do it like "the other ...

For those of you familiar with PayPerPost you have known about RealRank for quite some time. For those of you that aren't RealRank is a new Blog ranking system from Izea the site - IZEARanks.com . I got the email today letting me know the site was live. I stopped by registered my blog and checked everything out. Understand this is a ranking system for blogs and nothing else. In fact they allow users to flag sights that aren't blogs. The downside I see right away is the opt-in facet of the system. There will be sights that choose not to participate because of it's association on some level with PayPerPost, or some other reason. RealRank according to the site is a "blog ranking system that uses real data to calculate which blogs are getting the most traffic and have the most influence on the web. IZEARanks ranks the top blogs in the blogosphere via actual site statistics, not an extrapolation of estimates." There is a very nice graphical chart somewhat remeniscent ...

Monday night around 11:45ish I was sitting watching some TV, blogging, & chatting with friends when suddenly the whole house went black. I had no power. This lasted for about an hour and then everything returned to normal. I was using my laptop but I had my battery removed so when the power shut off so did the computer. I didn't feel like digging around in the office in the dark to find the battery. It could be so many places depending on the mood I was in when I removed it last. Anyway, this little scenario got me thinking about blogging without power. I would define power as having control of, authority, or influence over others. How does one define the power of a blog? There are various rankings from Technorati, Alexa, Google, and others as well. What do they mean though? What do they represent and do they give a good indication of the power of a blog? Does a blog that had a PR6 in October last year that now has a PR4 have less power? What about if that same blog now has 100...

OK, so you're on a tight budget and you need to build up the traffic to your website? When you build a website, it is very easy to overload your wallet, as the running costs start to escalate. As costs start to snowball out of control, it's now that you realize you need to find free traffic. How? Well, you may think it's impossible, but it's not. You can develop truckloads of free traffic, with the only cost to you being energy, effort and time. If you can commit to this, then you will most certainly get the traffic you desire. Links Developing links with other websites is one way to develop traffic to your site. Have a look at sites that are similar in size and compatibility with yours. When you find them, contact the owner and see if they're willing to post a link to your site - make sure you offer to return the favor to them as well. By doing this, both sites will benefit with a boost of traffic and correspondingly help your search rankings. There are also automa...

In case you missed it I have set a goal for this blog to earn $1500 in January . When I set this goal it was on January 15th and I had earned a total of $606.33 so far for the month. As you can see I had not yet earned half of my goal yet the month was already half over. I am determined to meet this goal and I wanted to keep everyone updated as to my progress. I will only give totals through yesterday as I am not done earning yet today! The totals will be through the end of the day Thursday. Without further ado... Here is where the earnings stand for the month. Affiliate Sales: $491.05 Paid Posting: $232.14 Contextual Ads: $34.61 Ad/Link Sales: $10.00 Misc: $2.78 Total MTD: $770.58 That is an average of a little over $45 per day so far this month. If I maintained that rate I would fall just a bit short of my goal. Although if you look at the earnings for the 16-17th after I set my goal and started my push the average jumps up to about $82 per day. Counting today the 18th there are 14 ...

I have talked a bit about offline advertising for you blog, but today I want to talk about a tool that can be used both offline and on. Promotional items are a proven, effective way to market your blog or website, company, school, service or event. Think of the sites that sell or give away promotional products. You can buy all kinds of Shoemoney merchandise, you can buy a shirt with your Alexa ranking, and there are hundreds of other sites out there that sell or give away promotional products. You can get your site logo imprinted on all types of promotional items from apparel, to pens, magnets, mouse pads, bags, cups, Promotional Calendars , and much more! Gimmees.com is a site that I have used to order some pens to give to friends, family, and to pass out to folks that ask me what I do. Gimmees.com features high quality, custom imprinted items at very affordable prices. I got some pens they had on sale for $.23 a piece with no setup fee. This is a great price and items like this can b...

For those of you familiar with PayPerPost you have known about RealRank for quite some time. For those of you that aren't RealRank is a new Blog ranking system from Izea the site - IzeaRank.com . I got the email today letting me know the site was live. I stopped by registered my blog and checked everything out. Understand this is a ranking system for blogs and nothing else. In fact they allow users to flag sights that aren't blogs. The downside I see right away is the opt-in facet of the system. There will be sights that choose not to participate because of it's association on some level with PayPerPost , or some other reason. RealRank according to the site is a "blog ranking system that uses real data to calculate which blogs are getting the most traffic and have the most influence on the web. IZEARanks ranks the top blogs in the blogosphere via actual site statistics, not an extrapolation of estimates." There is a very nice graphical chart somewhat remeniscent...

Back in the last PR update I was initially given a PR of 4. That quickly fell to a 3 then a 2 and then during the paid link crap down to a big fat 0. What I think is funny is that my traffic didn't drop, my incoming links didn't drop, yet simply because I had a few paid text links and posts google decided my content was no longer worthy. It didn't bother me too much as yahoo traffic more than filled the small gap left by a drop in google search traffic. It still would have been nice to at least have had some rank though. Well finally after about 3 months google decided I was once again worthy of PR! I have more content than ever, more incoming links, higher traffic, pretty much all my numbers are up from when I was awarded the PR4. So what do you think google in all of its monopolistic generosity bestowed upon this humble little blog? A very impressive PR1. I'm not complaining, mind you, simply commentating on the latest developements here at PPB. Before I go here is on...

I know quite a few bloggers that think offline advertising is not necessary or simply a waste of money. I beg to differ. I have found that if done in the right way offline advertising can be a very effective tool to drive traffic to your blog. Quite a while back I had some business cards made up for this website and carry several with me at all times. That way if someone asks what I do I can hand them a card and tell them I make a lot of money online with affiliate marketing and blogging. Many times there curiosity is raised and they want to know a bit more. I always will tell them to check out the site, browse and read through some of the articles and then contact me through the site or at the email address on the card. I have gotten several great referrals (one makes me quite a bit each month) for some of my affiliate programs this way. I also do some direct mail for a few of my affiliate offers and also for my real-estate flipping business. These are usually targeted mailings to spe...

Driving Traffic to your website is most likely all that is on your mind. You have a GREAT product, or all you need to do is send traffic to your affiliate page and BAM their ingenious marketing will turn your traffic into a sale. Simple? Not Quite. The Pay-Per-Click method of advertising can cost you a ridiculous amount of money. If you don't do your research on keywords, you're a goner. However, if done right PPC can be the most efficient way to drive traffic to your site. For those of you who want to put more time into your online business, the BEST way to drive traffic to your site is exactly this. Write ARTICLES in your area of expertise. Submit them to both print and online media that would be interested in your article. For example, an expert internet marketer, would submit his/her articles to the numerous forums or article websites out there. The most important part is NOT to self advertise in your article. Information is key. However ,you should always include your...

Well another year is in the can and new one is already flying by. Can you believe it is January 2nd already. It seems like the year just started yesterday. I just wanted give you all a year ending review of this blog. Most Popular Articles The 12 Links Of Christmas These articles were pretty much just full of links but the title, and the links, obviously caught people's attention. These were a great year end traffic building and link building series. Day 1 was actually my biggest article of the year with over 1000 visits in just a few short days. What The F Does The C Stand 4 My first and most successful contest. The Stripping Aristologist My second contest and I think the reference to stripping and a big word most people probably didn't know helped this one along. Boca Java, Rush Limbaugh, And Affiliate Marketing This is still the article that gets the most search traffic. It is also one of my highest converting affiliate offers for the site. Hits4Pay Program Review This has b...

A few days before Christmas I was stumbling around the blogosphere and happened on a blog called Binary Blonde and an article she had written Pay It Forward . I was inspired by the article and commented about it not expecting to be in the "3." I thought it was a great idea and originally was going to post about it at Christmas. I then decided to wait until New Year's Day and start the year off right by spreading some goodwill. Well as it turns out I was in the 3 and have been the recipient of Binary Blonde's Pay It Forward kindness, and so I want to say a heartfelt thanks to her for the article she wrote and for whatever I may be receiving in the coming days. Here is how this concept works. The first three (3) lucky people to comment on this post will receive a gift from me in the mail. The only thing you have to do in return is post the same concept on your blog and send three (3) people (best if they're[sic] strangers) a gift from you. As far as I know, there a...

I know a lot of people that use just google or just yahoo when doing a search. This can limit your results as each engine tends to rank sites differently and therefore your results can vary greatly from one to the other. I know for me, since the google PR drop due to sponsored links, that now my pages rank much higher in yahoo than they used to and lower in google. No one search engine has a monopoly on the "best" results. EarthFrisk.Org is the worlds first hybrid meta-community search engine . I have to be honest I am just a bit leery on their social ranking procedure, but it has worked well for Digg and others who allow users to "digg" or "bury" sites and combining this with hybrid results of the top search engines will bring a nice balance to the results. I noticed right away that already the searches I did seem to have superior results by combining the very best of Ask, Google, Yahoo and MSN's Live! I did a search on google, yahoo, and ask and visi...