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In the whole set up of a website, you might consider what type of monetizing plan you want to try. There are quite a few options.

- Self-hosted banner advertising

- Banner advertising with a company like BuySellAds, Project Wonderful, and more.

- Text Ads wit Text Link Ads, Google Adwords, and even Adbrite.

Of course, there are more places. These are just a few examples.

But STOP! You need to have a site with content, and then have traffic. Without traffic, how can you make money?

A lot of people think that just having a website means people will automatically come. It is not as simple as quoted in the movie Field of Dreams – “If you build it, he will come.”

There is more work involved. You can place all the right keywords, but that might attract and make people stay, subscribe, and become a regular… even a customer. It important to create a reputable presence for your site. Connect with others in your niche and allow them to give feedback. Return comments or make your visitors feel welcomed.

Once your site picks up enough traffic, you can finally start experimenting on incorporating ads and such to make money. Not every program works. Some do better while others do not. However, even if you build a site, be prepared to do more work to build a sturdy traffic flow.

Have you monetized your site? What works for you? (There is a poll in the sidebar related to this article… please try it out.)

Internet has grown at a prolific pace over the last decade or so. This has also resulted in growth of the online marketing industry. Advertising on the internet is a very major part of internet marketing, and since Google is one of the most powerful companies online, it developed a tool called Adwords which helps people in online advertising. In fact, Adwords has become one of the most widely used online advertising programs. Despite the huge success achieved by this program a lot of companies are not fully aware about how the process works. Lack of knowledge leads to companies spending money without knowing whether the program will succeed or not.

The auctions conducted by Google for the advertisements are basically aimed at providing customer satisfaction by giving more relevant ads. But Google also makes sure that all the advertisers also get a position in the ads. Last but not the least, Google also ends up making a pretty healthy profit. In fact, more than 97% of Google’s revenue comes through advertising. Considering the fact that Google makes over $30 billion annually, that is a lot of money. Here are the steps involved in the entire auction process.

How does Google Ads auctions work?

Firstly, you need to have an account with Adwords. Once you have made an account you need to fill in various details. The most essential one is identifying the keywords that you want to use for your product. After you have decided the keywords, you create groups of these keywords that can be paired with different ads. This is the only thing that you have to do. After this whenever someone enters a query in Google search bar, Google checks the Adwords list and sees whether there is a need of an auction for that particular query. If there are more than two accounts bidding or the same set of keywords then the auction takes place.

You should know that the search query is not the exact keyword. Even a query like medicine for dogs may be associated with a pool that has keywords as pet medicine. After this, Google will take the keywords from the accounts and enter them in the bidding process along with the maximum bid specified by that account for the particular ad.

Determining the Rank and the Cost Per Click

The next step in the process is to determine which ad will be shown at what rank. For this Google uses two factors, the maximum amount that you have specified for the bid and the quality factor. The quality factor is determined using various components like the Click Through Rate (CTR) and relevance of the landing page amongst other things. The ads are ranked on the basis of the product of these two numbers. The advertiser with the highest result is placed at the top.

To determine the price paid by you, the ad rank score of the advertiser below you is divided by your quality factor. You add $0.01 to this figure and that is the amount you have to give as Cost per Click (CPC).

I was recently going through some of my older posts on sponsored tweetings and making money twitter, that even though there are a lot of people who have read, shared, and commented, I wondered, how many of my readers actually make money on twitter?

It does not matter if you are using Sponsored Tweets, Twtmob, Fiverr, or another service, I thought it would be cool to see the results. Also, if you do, mind commenting and saying what services you use and what has worked for you?

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You might have a great site or one that businesses out there are looking to buy text links on. It could be your traffic, and it could be that your site fits the niche they are looking for. Selling links on your site can be tricky, especially if you are selling “in house” links (meaning you are doing this yourself instead of through third party places like Adbrite or Text Link Ads or others out there.

It is important to be smart about how you sell your links. A lot of people may want to buy spaces for site wide links or maybe even within some of your articles.

Set Your Price

You will be given offers and if your site is doing decent on traffic, sometimes even bundled link packages may not be the best price if you allow the buyer to make the choice. In the same breath, be fair and do not overcharge. If you are normally selling banner ad spaces or text links through third party sources, make sure to try to stay consistent with those prices.

Never Agree to Permanently Place A Link For However Long Your Site Exists

You should NEVER agree to sell links and allow them to remain on your site permanently. You are tying up your site with links and if your site’s traffic increases quite well over the span of a year, you should already be re-assessing the prices of both banner ads and text advertising. Offer packages in increments of 1 month, 3 months, or 6 months. If the client is good, maybe a year, but make that decision at your own discretion.

Some of the link buyers love to try to get in permanent link placement and in the end its a better deal for them when your site does well. Do not be fooled. They are eager to quick pay, and that may be enticing, but you need to think about it long term and not just in the now.

Make Sure You Have A Linking Policy In Place

If you prefer to offer Sponsored Links in posts, tell your buyer that. Create a special place that tells people it is a sponsored link and you can allow the client to put together a sentence with a keyword to help them.

If you do not have site wide ads and have specific pages or templates set for different ads, let the buyer know.

The whole point is to make sure you put in a policy that will not make your site look so filled with links and look spammy to your visitors.

Only Accept Relevant Ads To Your Site

If you accept ads that have nothing to do with your site, you might be opening up your site to more opportunities to spam. In doing this, you are basically not even concerned with your visitors and only with making money.

While making money on your site is great, if you are trying to establish more authority in your niche, your visitors would probably appreciate seeing ads that have greatly benefited your site. For example, for blogs about blogging, you might want to put up ads about SEO services or even Premium Themes for blogs. Another example would be for gaming sites to have ads about games, both online and for different types of gaming consoles out there.

These are merely a few suggestions on how to smartly sell text links on your site.

If you have any other suggestions, feel free to comment and share them.

After reading Do Bloggers Really Deserve to Be Paid? at Mom Blog Magazine, I was not really sure why there was any controversy in this area – regardless if the blog was for mommy bloggers or any other niche blogger.

I do not care how long someone has been online, the blogging did not go mainstream until 2005. After that, the scene exploded and advertisers finally started catching on to the power of having bloggers write sponsored posts or paid reviews.

However, I think since then, a lot of bloggers have failed to realize that it is more than just having a website that you deserve to get paid. It takes work to get to the point that your website’s traffic and influence becomes attractive to companies out there.

While the article cites that -

One side insists that their time is valuable, while the other cites a lack of budget for such expenses.

- there really is no issue still. Both sides either need to agree or disagree that the gig is a sponsored post in exchange for money, just a review, or not even write about the company’s product or service.

For the Sponsor/ Advertiser

If you are approaching bloggers to talk about your product, do not expect them to do it out of the kindness of their heart. It is their website.

In the case of funding, if you do not have it and are trying to market your products or services, you have no business approaching bloggers who have a clear advertising program that includes sponsored posts. Otherwise, bloggers doing it should be paid. Do research and select bloggers with a decent reach – and not just by their Twitter or Facebook fan page counts.

The problem is that there are a lot of bloggers wanting to make money, but not willing themselves to make sure that they are marketing their own site. Thus, it really is pointless to invest in paying them to review your product.

For the Blogger

Approaching a business and not getting paid for a review is a volunteer part on your own. Do not expect to get paid unless you have made the effort to market and build a good foundation of readers. When you are trying to make money, be clear on a few factors when pitching why a company should pay you to blog about their site, product, or even service:

• How you can deliver the product or service to your readers?
• How many people do you reach?
• How much are you asking for?

Unfortunately you cannot rely on those 10,000 followers you tweet out your posts to. You still have only so much reach there. It is your site alone that companies want to know about.

Bloggers should get paid for their time when writing sponsored posts, or product reviews for companies. However, it boils down to how the site’s reach and reputation can give back to.

There should not be any confusion or arguments in this matter. It is either both sides agree that it is a paid job, or not.

What are your thoughts?

Since the Internet came on the mainstream scene in the mid 1990s, it has literally exploded with marketers eager to tap into the world-wide market.  Working from home has long been a tempting career move for many, and even more so now that the unemployment rate in many countries is at record levels.  Even many of you who have jobs are fearful of lay-offs or termination and making money online seems a viable option as a full-time job.  But before you decide to join the stampede into online entrepreneurship, there are a few things you should be aware of.  Even though you may only wish to make some extra money online, it can turn into a rat race which will overwhelm you if you are not careful.

In any business, success is never guaranteed but with strict adherence to some tried and true principles, your chances will be greatly enhanced.  You must create a strong business plan detailing the expenses you will have, how you will make money, and how your business can succeed in the current depressed economy.  This article gives you information on four important factors to help you get your internet business off on the right foot and keep it thriving without taking up all your time and jeopardizing your current lifestyle.

1.    Assemble a Team of Mentors

You will need experts in the fields of technology, web design, finance, taxes and online marketing.  You will want to assemble a team of people who have experience in internet based business, who have ‘been there, done that’ and will give you advice on what works and what doesn’t.  When you begin, make sure you have identified your own weaknesses, and seek out friends and mentors that are experts in those fields.  Please do not look for advisors. Look for mentors. The difference is that a mentor has already been successful in what you want to achieve. These people are hard to find. The world is full of internet marketing “advisors” who have never made enough consistent income to subsidise a day-time job, telling other people how to quite their jobs and start an internet business. Find people who know about Adwords advertising, internet traffic, SEO strategy and Social Media.  Get the best help you can get. Many times you can get that help for free. Having a team will save you doing everything yourself like an employee who works on overtime with little or no pay.

2.    Put your Business on Auto-Pilot

There are some aspects of online businesses which can virtually ‘run themselves’.  Online retailers can automate web platforms, content management and also communication systems and distribution.  Making good use of modern technology will provide efficient management of much of the day to day tasks thus freeing up your precious time.  This is where your team of mentors will literally save you – save you making big and costly mistakes that will ruin your business.

3.    Offline Work Can Be Outsourced

Since online businesses usually involve selling of some sort, you will also have a lot of offline work as well.  Your product will involve storage and distribution and possible other work as well.  You must set up the necessary infrastructure for these things before you can sell anything.  This part of your business is crucial to your business’s reputation and growth; be sure you hire a well established and dependable company who will enhance your business, not tear it down.

4.    A Virtual Assistant Can Be a Virtual Lifesaver

Now that your online platform has been outsourced, you will need a manager to keep your account relations.  Contrary to a traditional business manager, you can hire a Virtual Assistant which can handle those duties from anywhere in the world.  There are many qualified persons available for hire who can handle all your administration tasks online.  These can be located and hired through several online agencies such as elance.  Hiring a good VA is a key element in running your successful online business and not letting it monopolize your life.

Remember, you want to have a business; you don’t want a business to have you!  I hope the advice given here will be of benefit to you when planning your internet business so it will indeed be a full-time business that only takes a part-time effort on your part.

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Autoblogging software allows site owners to produce content on whim and literally puts a site on auto-pilot for the pure sport of making money. For serious bloggers, autoblogging should be avoided.

How It Works

The site owner installs the script or plugin (there are some companies that offer autoblogging software). They adjust the settings of the software to specific keywords that the site should crawl and publish. For example, if there was an all WordPress website, or perhaps an all marketing site. It is very random and even topics are not always on target because bloggers do not tag or categorize their posts properly.

Some of the settings also include scheduling posts, so if the script crawls 100 articles, it will publish each post at the allotted time.

A lot of times when the article has been posted, the site tries to send a trackback to the original article, trying to get backlinks.

Why It Should Be Avoided

Because the crawling can be random, the site becomes just one hot mess of spam. While it seems great to try to make money, it is annoying for visitors because they found the site in the search engines and it had nothing to do with what they were searching for. It also makes the site very messy in organization because the posts publishing will re-publish tags. Unless the site owner has a care, they may have to edit the post.

Another issue is that maybe the full article was not publish or perhaps it was, and no attribution was given. This would be content stealing.

Autoblogging in few cases might serve a great purpose if it were carefully monitored. However, it would be better to blog naturally. Another person’s article is being published and frankly, I find it a bit disturbing that no one is seeking monetary retribution for the money earned by autobloggers making money off of their blog posts.

People are not stupid. They will not leave a comment on a site that is painfully obvious to what is going on. Nor will they click on ads or do any business with a site that does not care one lick about what they publish.

Autoblogging does nothing for backlinks expect for build meaningless ones. This is why bloggers should make sure to check any pingbacks or trackbacks before approving them. A lot of people blindly approve these without taking a deeper look.

Autoblogging, while companies who make this software may say it is great for affiliate marketing – again I say… if you do not care to publish your own content, why should people do business with a person trying to make money off of other people’s hard work.

Truthfully, I believe autoblogging could have had a better and more honest approach. However, all the companies out there (and I am not putting down the developers of the software) that are selling these plugins are not setting a good example for bloggers.

For those who are new to this concept, I recommend checking your comments for pingbacks and trackbacks to check to see if you have been visited by autoblogging spam.

What are your views on autoblogging? Are there really any sites out there powered by autoblogging software that have been exceptions?

I have become completely turned off with some of the blogs out there that I had visited regularly, especially after finding the very person that built the blog and its community left the moment they sold the blog. While I can see some of the reasons for selling a site, there really are some things that site owners forget, especially when they use social networking and connect with people and have establish a strong following. Please do note that I mention ‘well established sites’ meaning that they have great traffic and a multitude of visitors who leave comments and even a healthy size social network following too. Not just a site that is put together on the fly, optimized, and then flipped.

When you build a website and people start associating that site with you, they kind of like the fact that you are there to engage in conversation with. You are the one who has brought in the visitors who may support you. However, when selling it off, it does not work like being fired – you do not disappear immediately.

In doing so, that action tells me:

• Unaware that some people do come because they drawn in by the site owner because they provided engaging content.
• They were only in for the money?
• They did not care.

The right way to leave a blog after selling it is that if you want to eventually leave, you need to do it in gradual steps. And when I mean “gradual”, usually over a couple weeks so the new people can settle in, become wholeheartedly welcomed by the site’s community, and eventually notice that you are no longer in a leading role with the website. Remember, even Google takes a bit of time to catch up on information too, so this gradual change will allow a smooth transition.

Make the announcement, keep engaging with users, and be prepared that if you have loyal readers, assure them that the new owners will be as engaging as you have. After a week of engaging, decrease your involvement in engaging by the day until you are interacting a few times, and then down to nothing after that.

Remember, even if your blog is not a forum, you do have people that regularly visit and you have literally built a community. This should never be taken lightly, especially if you are a person that normally likes to build sites with a strong community before selling them.

This leads to confusion and sometimes, like myself, I go to the website because I met someone I thought was interesting and their content that they provided was engaging. Sometimes when a site owner leaves, the very people that visited to hear what you had to say, are the same people that will leave as well.

What other suggestions do you have for blog owners that are considering to sell their well established and engaging website? How can they make the smoothest transition when exchanging site site over to the new owners?