28 Ways to Make Money with Your Website (3)

8. RSS Feed Ads

With the quick adoption of the RSS technology by millions of Internet users, website owners are starting to find ways to monetize this new content distribution channel.

Feedburner already has its own publisher network, and you can sign-up to start displaying CPM based advertising on your feed footer. Bidvertiser recently introduced a RSS feed ad option as well, with a PPC scheme.

Finally, some blogs are also opting to sell banners or sponsored messages on their feed directly. John Chow and Marketing Pilgrim are two examples.

Related links:
Feedburner
BidVertiser
Pheedo

9. Sponsors for Single Columns or Events

If you website has specific columns or events (e.g., a weekly podcast, an interview series, a monthly survey, a special project) you could find companies to sponsor them individually.

This method increases the monetization options for website owner, while giving advertisers the possibility to target a more specific audience and with a reduced commitment.

Mashable illustrates the case well. They have several advertising options on the site, including the possibility to sponsor specific columns and articles, including the “Daily Poll” and the “Web 2.0 Invites.”

Problogger also runs group writing projects occasionally, and before proceeding he publicly announce the project asking for sponsors.

10.Premium Content

Some websites and blogs give away part of their content for free, and charge for access to the premium content and exclusive tools.

SEOMoz is a good example. They have a very popular blog that gives advice and information on wide range of SEO related topics. On top of that visitors can decide to become premium members. It costs $48 monthly and it grants them access to guides, tools and other exclusive material

11. Private Forums

While the Internet is populated with free forums, there is also the possibility to create a private one where members need to pay a single or recurring fee to join.

SEO Blackhat charges $100 monthly from its members, and they have thousands of them. Obviously in order to charge such a price for a forum membership you need to provide real value for the members (e.g., secret techniques, tools, and so on).

Performancing also launched a private forum recently, focused on the networking aspect. It is called The Hive, and the monthly cost is $10.

These are just two examples. There are many possibilities to create a private and profitable forum, you just need to find an appealing angle that will make it worth for the members.

List of popular forum software:
vBulletin
Simple Machines Forum
phpBB
Vanilla

Search Engine Optimization For Blogs (SEO)

Blogging software is really a simple Content Management System (CMS) that easily adds new pages and integrates them into your site's navigational structure and linkage.

Blogs and blog posts are naturally search engine friendly because they are text-rich, link-rich, frequently-updated webpages that use stylesheets or CSS, and have very little extraneous HTML.

Optimizing a blog is very similar to optimizing a website, and optimizing a blog post similar to optimizing a web page. But depending on the blogging service or software you use, the results may look somewhat different.

If you follow some simple rules for search engine optimization, your blog can rank much higher than static website pages in the search engine results pages.

Here are the most important rules to follow to get your posts listed for keywords of your choice.

1. Use your primary keyword in your blog domain

Whether you purchase a separate domain (recommended) for your blog, or host it on a blogging service or a subdomain of your own site, try to ensure that your URL contains the primary keyword you want to optimize for.

For example, if you want your blog to get found for the keyword "rss" get a domain with the keyword "rss", or use the keyword in a subdomain as in http://ebizwhiz-publishing.com/rssnews/

Getting a domain name with your own name might make for good branding, especially if yours is a personal blog.

But if you're doing it for business and want the targeted traffic to flow your way, keywords in the domain or subdomain are a move in the right direction.

2. Use your primary key phrase in your blog header tags and the title of your posts

If your primary key phrase is "business blogging" make sure that the word business, or blogging, or both, appear in your blog headers (the H1 or H2 tags) as well as the title of each of your posts.

Most blogging software will take the keywords in your post title and put them into the file name of the permalink posts it creates.

For example, if you have a blog on Blogger and title your post "Search Engine Optimization For Blogs", Blogger will automatically create a page with your post and name the file "search-engine-optimization-for-blogs.html" or something similar.

With other server-side software like Wordpress and Movable Type, you may require the mod_rewrite command to save the title of your entries as a permalink.

3. Use your secondary keywords in the body of your post

If you want to get listed for secondary keywords use them infrequently in the body of your post and pepper your blog titles or links with them appropriately.

Don't overdo this or your posts will end up sounding unnatural and spammy to readers.

4. Use your keywords in the anchor text of links

Keyword in links have more importance than simple text.

Use your primary and secondary keywords in the anchor text of links when linking to other blog posts or to other pages on your main site.

Link keywords where they naturally appear in the body text, but again, don't overdo it, or you'll end up with spammy looking pages.

5. Make sure search engines can spider your blog easily

Set up your blog so that the side navigation bar is present on all pages.

Make sure your archives and previous posts are accessible from all pages of your blog so they get spidered easily.

6. Get backlinks from other blogs or websites

Links pointing to your blog or posts are essential to build pagerank and make your blog rank higher in the search engine listings.

I've seen many people recommend Blogrolling as one method of building links to your blog.

BlogRolling is a one-stop linklist manager for your blog or journal.
http://www.blogrolling.com

But all this service actually does is give you a bit of javascript code that "calls" the links.

As far as search engine rankings go, this method of linking is of little use, because spiders can't read external javascript code.

Instead I recommend that you focus your linking efforts on the methods here.

* Submitting to Blog Search Engines and Directories:

Submitting your blog and RSS feed to blog search engines and directories is essential for getting high-quality links back to your blog. Here is the best list I've found of places to submit your feed or blog.

Best Blog Directory And RSS Submission Sites
http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/

* Link Exchanges:

Many similarly-themed blogs are often willing to exchange links with other blogs and form richly interlinked networks or communities. Link exchanges with other blogs are easy to implement with most blogging software.

* Trackbacks:

You can also get links back to your blog using trackbacks. One of the disadvantages of using Blogger is that it does not automatically create trackback urls that others can use to link back to your posts.

Haloscan is a free service that will automatically add comments and trackbacks to your Blogger blog.
http://www.haloscan.com

But if trackbacks are an important component of your linking strategy, I would advise using another software or system that adds this feature automatically.

* Comments:

You can also get back links to your blog by posting legitimate comments in response to posts on other blogs.

7. Update frequently

There's no better food for search engine spiders than fresh content.

Post and update your blog frequently using all the rules outlined above and there's no reason why your blog will not get you top rankings in a short period of time.

8. Stay put

Once you create your blog, try to stick to the same domain and blog host or system for as long as you continue to publish.

You could end up losing a lot of your traffic, your readers and all your search engine listings if you decide to move.

For more ways of building traffic to your blog, read the article "How To Build Traffic To Your Blog."
http://www.blog-maniac.com/build-blog-traffic.htm

24 Tips and Strategies on How Everyone Can Blog Right - part 3

Tip #13 - RSS Feeds
RSS to a blog is like fuel to cars. Mostly every single free
blogs or bloggin software out there will have an automatic
RSS feed generating feature. Although it's most unlikely
that you'll find one without a RSS feature, simply leave it
and find a new one, if you happen to come across one without
it.

Tip #14 - The essence of the Internet - Traffic. It's no
secret. You must have traffic to realize the definition of a
blog.. There are numerous ways to build traffic. Paid and
free advertising, viral marketing, search engine marketing,
RSS/XML feeds, word-of-mouth, submitting to numerous blog
and RSS directories, etc. RSSBlogsubmit provides a submission service for your Blog & RSS feeds. You should always use your blog URL address in the signature of your email, forum
discussions, message boards, or any other communication
media. Never forget to share your blog to your friends,
colleagues, and any other invidious that you know of.

Tip #15 - Track Your Blog
Tracking your blog does not have to be overly sophisticated
usually a simple free page counter like StatCounter.com,
ActiveMeter.com, Extremetracking.com or Sitemeter.com will
do the trick. Install (copy/paste) the code into the html of
your blog template and start tracking your visitors. Its
better to use a service which gives you advanced traffic
analysis, such as keyword tracking information, referral
information, and search engine information. Visitors,
returning visitors, and unique visitors should be standard
for any page counter service you choose.

Tip #16 - Make use of your Blog's statistical and tracking
information. Believe it or not, your visitors' information
from your tracking scripts will provide you priceless
information on how you can attract more readers. Keep note
on the keyword terms used from search engines which bring
you traffic. You can identify relevant closely related
topics which you can venture into and add more variety into
your blog, yet staying very much in topic. Simply put, more
topic coverage and more variety = more traffic. You may
analyze your tracking information further on how you can
strategize your blog's content. You can also apply some
keyword optimization strategies here.

Tip #17 - The essence of your Blog is your Audience, listen
to them. Always interact with your readers who post comments
on your blog. Reply with a brief thank you note or just
simply attend to their questions if they have any. It's a
proven fact when there's a direct human interaction and
knowing the fact that there's a "real human" at the other
end of the blog makes most of them coming back. If your
audience provide suggestions, comments or feedbacks, take
them constructively and inform them if you have any desires
of implementing such ideas on your next update. And of
course, don't forget to thank them for their ideas. If it's
a great idea, why not throw in a free gift? Mention their
website in your blog?

Tip #18 - Create and increase the "Why Must I Return" Value
to Your Blog
Everyone knows the fact that Blogs get a huge level of
returning visitors because of its constantly updated
content. Why don't you add more interesting items to that
return value by having fixed periodical posts / offers, e.g.
Monday Top 10 Tips, Picture of the Week, Free Bonus of the
Month, Free Daily Wallpapers, etc. to give them the absolute
excuse to return to your blog. As long as you can
efficiently and appropriately increase that Return Value
constantly, it is mostly guaranteed that you'll be getting
tonnes of repeated visitors, period.

An advance notice, prelaunch announcement or anything
similar to that also can act as a short term return value
strategy. Encourage readers to comment on your such notices
/ posts. Experiment and play around with this idea.