Cheat and fake your Feedburner stats – This video has been doing the rounds and blogged about quite a bit over the last few hours but thought its worthy enough to post it here on NetMoneyFAQ.

Anyway Joop Dorresteijn at TheNextWeb has done a video post on how Feedburner stats can be easily hacked and faked, now I don't recomend doing this at home, but it highlights serious a flaw in the way Feedburner counts RSS Subscribers, Joop's post is below:

Feedburner hack: how to get 2500 subscribers overnight (video)

and you can see the full video here:

The lesson here is don’t always believe any blogs Feedburner stats they cannot be counted on as an reliable measure of subscribers.

I can imagine fixing this issue with Feedburner, will also affect bloggers that have a high proportion of legitimtate readers using services such as NetVibes, etc. It may also affect the stats of bloggers that use services that count emal RSS email subscribers, so it will sure be interesting to see any affect on the big bloggers that heavily promote RSS email subscription.

Frankly if you are not converting first time and second time readers of your blog into RSS feed subscribers, you are doing a big injustice to yourself and your blog. The likelihood of having these visitors return in the future is very low; greatly reducing your blogs total monthly visitor numbers and therefore your blogs total reach and potential. What’s worse you are totally under the mercy of Google so should you get sandboxed by them, visitors would reduce to a trickle along with any PPC and PPA revenue.

I will start with my story, when I first started blogging in around 2004 with my technical blogs I did a very bad job of converting visitors into RSS subscribers, to be honest I never considered implementing strategies to grow them. Then around a year later after signing up with Feedburner and seeing the number of return readers, it was like a light bulb being turned on above my head, realising RSS subscribers will yield more of my blogs total monthly readership than what Google could ever give me.

After this realisation I set about devising strategies and thinking more about how to optimize the number of RSS subscribers to my blogs.

How to increase your RSS readership

First if not already done get yourself a Feedburner account http://www.feedburner.com, Feedburner is the number 1 feed aggregation service, which provides additional features such as subscriber and click stats, Monetization along with some great RSS feed promotion widgets. So why not check it out!

To successfully increase subscribers to your RSS feed is all about the real estate you give to RSS Feed subscription button and how you promote you promote your this feed, so lets take a look.

If you look at this blog NetMoneyFAQ my RSS Subscription button  located on the top of every blog post on my blogs main sites page, and for the blogs individual page I have the RSS subscription button at the bottom of the post. The reason for not having my RSS Subscription button on the top of my posts page is because this can affect each posts keyword relevance causing your page to display further down in search results for its targeted keywords.

Write quality interesting posts -  This goes without saying if you are not at least doing this you will have trouble getting readers subscribe to your feed let alone return to your blog.

Write captivating post titles/headlines – Writing a captivating title is all about getting readers to your blog in the first place which you can then convert into RSS subscribers.

Educate - Write an post explaining what RSS is and how to read them, many of your readers may not know what an RSS feed is, let alone anything about RSS reader programs.

Promote your RSS feed every chance you get, this includes reminding users to subscribe in the closing lines of each blog post along with using the Feedburner Headline Animator widget in your email signature.

↑ Grab this Headline Animator

The Feedburner headline animator for your email signature

Post a full RSS feeds of your post, this tip is neither proven nor disproven, as I have seen instances where full RSS feeds has both increased and decreased subscribers on my blogs I have some publishing a full post feed and others posting an aggregate feed post feed, experiment and find out what works best.

Perform regular posts at least 4-7 times per week, Well this is the reason why readers want to subscribe, because you are posting regular quality posts, and they have been to your blog a few time previously, they won’t even both if they are not seeing regular posts.

Offer a free eBook for subscribing; Most people love something for free, so a well written eBook might be just what your RSS feed needs.

Many of the techniques listed above also work well increasing mail list subscribers, but that along with other mailling list promotion tips in a future post about increasing mailing list subscribers.

If you found this post interesting why not sign-up for the NetMoneyFAQ RSS Feed here  Subscribe for RSS Updates also sign up for with NetMoneyFAQ to participate in the NetMoneyFAQ Forums

Text Link Ads on your Community Server blog – Text Link Ads is a great little money earner for those with a semi established blog, which is why I decided to put together this quick Text Link Ads Implementation Guide for Community Server, If you are a Wordpress blogger don’t despair I have already done a guide for you, which is here How to implement Text Link Ads on your Wordpress blog

For those new to Text Link Ads and/or blogging, Text Link Ads is as the name suggests a Publisher/Advertiser program allowing Advertisers to purchase links with their desired anchor text on your (The Publishers) blog or website (See figure 1 below for a good example on my Business Travel Blog right hand side bar).

What differentiates Text Link Ads from other advertising programs is that you get paid a flat rate per month for each text link ad you display, that Text Link Ads determines by your Google pagerank and Alexa Rank. The great thing about the entire relationship is the Text Link Ad company MediaWiz finds and arranges Text Link advertisers for you, leaving you to do what you do best, Blog! 

What are the steps involved to get Text Link Ads installed on your Community Server blog

1. Sign up with Text Link Ads, their sign up page can be found here Text Link Ads Sign up page. Once approved move onto step 2, if not approved, keep up regular posts and link promotion then apply again later when your page rank and/or Alexa rank improves. I have written the following guide which will help with improving these figures.

2. Configure and Download the ASP .Net Text Link Ads controls

For Community Server I highly recommend using the ASP .NET controls

The Text Link Ads Website will step you thru ASP .NET configuration and download process, outlined below:

Text Link Ads on Community Server select ASP .NET

Text Link Ads get Ad Code Wizard -  Chose the number of rows

3. Copy Text Link Ads ASP .NET controls to your server 

Create a new directory named Controls on the root of your website, and copy both controls textLinkAds.ascx & textLinkAds.ascx.cs to your newly created controls directory.

4. Placement of Text Link Ads

If you plan on Implementing Text Link Ads on your Community Servers main site page and on your blog pages, you will need to add code to the following two files:

\Themes\<Theme Name>\Common\home.aspx (Community Server Main Site Page)

\Themes\Blogs\<Theme Name>\theme.Master (Community Server blog page)

At the top of each file add the following line to register the Text Link Ads control

<%@ Register Src="~/Controls/textLinkAds.ascx" TagName="textLinkAds" TagPrefix="tla"%>

Further down in the area where you want Text Link Ads to be displayed (normally in CommonSideBarArea) add the following line:

<tla:textLinkAds ID="ctlTextLinkAds" textLinkAdsID="<123456>" textLinkAdsInventoryKey="XXXXXXXXXXXXXX" runat="server" />

Note replace the fields textLinkAdsID and textLinkAdsInventoryKey with your actual ID and key, a customized copy of this line will be available to you in your account page on the Text Link Ads website.

See the example below, where I have copied my code:

<%@ Master Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" MasterPageFile="~/Themes/leanandgreen/blogs/blogs.master" %>

<%@ Import Namespace="CommunityServer.Components" %>

<%@ Import Namespace="CommunityServer.Blogs.Components" %>

<asp:Content ContentPlaceHolderID="HeaderRegion" runat="server" >

    <CSControl:SelectedNavigation Selected="blog" runat="server" />

    <head runat="server">

    <CSControl:Head runat="Server">

        <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />

        <CSControl:Style runat="server" visible = "true" />

        <CSControl:Style runat="server" Href="~/themes/leanandgreen/style/Common.css" />

                        <CSControl:Style runat="server" Href="~/themes/leanandgreen/style/Blog.css" />

                        <CSControl:Style runat="server" Href="~/themes/leanandgreen/style/common_print.css" media="print" />

                        <CSControl:Style runat="server" Href="~/themes/leanandgreen/style/blog_print.css" media="print" />

                        <CSControl:Style runat="server" Href="~/themes/leanandgreen/style/DynamicStyle.aspx" EnsureNotCachedOnPreview="true" />

                        <CSBlog:ThemeStyle runat="server" Href="~/style/DynamicStyle.aspx" EnsureNotCachedOnPreview="true" />

<%@ Register Src="~/Controls/textLinkAds.ascx" TagName="textLinkAds" TagPrefix="tla"%>

....

.......

.............

Further down in same file

<asp:Content ID="Content2" ContentPlaceHolderID="rcr" runat="server">

            <div class="CommonSidebar">

                                        <div class="CommonSidebarTopRound"><div class="t1"></div><div class="t2"></div><div class="t3"></div><div class="t4"></div></div>

<div class="BizTravelGuruMenu">

<div class="CommonSidebarArea">

<h4 class="CommonSidebarHeader">Recomended Links </h4>

<tla:textLinkAds ID="ctlTextLinkAds" textLinkAdsID="123456" textLinkAdsInventoryKey="XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX" runat="server" />

</div>

            </div>

    5. Create blank Text Link Ads XML files

Finally you need to create a blank Text Link Ads XML file named local_<PublisherID>.xml (i.e. local_123456.xml if your publisher ID is 123456) in both the following locations:

\Themes\<Theme Name>\Common\

\Themes\Blogs\leanandgreen\

These xml files need to be writable/modifiable by the NETWORK SERVICE and/or the ASP.NET Machine Account (MachineName\ASPNET) and is the xml file where the advertisers URL and anchor text will reside.

Congratulations Text Link Ads will now be installed and configured on your Community Server site & blogs.

Note if you have not sold any Text Link Ads on your site, for the first 12 hours a default sample Text Link Ad will display, so you can determine if the plug-in is correctly configured/installed and that your HTML formatting looks as it should. After 12 hours nothing will be displayed until Text Link Ad inventory is sold on your blog.

After configuring as above you will receive an email from Text Link Ads saying that your Ad code has been installed and your inventory is now live on the Text Link Ads Website for Advertisers to purchase.

How does Google treat Text Link Ads?

Google has recently cracked down on text link advertising, decreasing the PageRank PR of sites which have excessive Text Links ads on their site, thru experience I have found there are some tricks you can implement to fool Google into not detecting text links as link advertising.

To begin you should ensure you keep your ASP .NET controls from Text Link Ads up to date.

Next ensure your text link ads section is not titled with anything like the following Advertisers, Sponsors, Paid Links, Text Link Ads, Instead use a title like Recommended Links, Friends of XYZ Blog.   

Finally wrap your Text Link Ads in a Div and implement some different formatting, such as I have implemented on the Business Travel Guru blog, check it out

Adjusting your Text Link Ads Monthly Cost

One final note it’s not well known but publishers can specify their TLA ad cost, so once you start selling ad spots consider getting the price of your ads increased, especially if ad spots on your site are selling quickly, as this is a good sign your TLA inventory is worth more, you can always reduce the price if your inventory stops selling. Just send a message to TLA publisher support thru your TLA account.

If you are having any issues getting Text Link Ads to work with Community Server, or have a comment on this topic dont hesitate to add a comment, create a forum post in NetMoneyFAQs Text Link Ads forum, or drop me an email ben.hoffman@NetMoneyFAQ.com

With the recent site redesign of NetMoneyFAQ, we have now added forums to the site, giving registered readers the opportunity to post messages and questions in a medium that allows more feature rich discussion, such as URL linking and picture embedding.

Initially I had serious reservations about enabling the Community Server forums on this site, because I did not want the forums to distract from the importance of our comment system, but after some serious thought it was decided forums for NetMoneyFAQ is a great way forward, potentially exposing this site to more search engine visitors via content which in the most part is self creating.

For now we have decided to limit the number of forums, but obviously we are open to suggestions if there are forum we are missing which would compliment this blog, just email me ben.hoffman@NetMoneyFAQ.com  Current forums are listed below:

Hosting

                Dedicated hosting

                Shared Hosting

                VPS Hosting

Make Money Online

                Google Adsense

                Microsoft Adcenter

                Yahoo Publishing Network

                Azoogle

                WidgetBucks

                Text Link Ads

                Kontera

                Commission Junction

                ReviewMe

                Bidvertiser

Search Engines & SEO Forums

                Google SEO Forum

                Yahoo SEO Forum

                Microsoft SEO Forum

Site Development

                Community Server

                General Site Development Discussion

                Wordpress

SEO, Keyword & Web Dev Tools

                Web2Submitter

                MicroNicheFinder

So to get on board sign-up with an account by clicking on this NetMoneyFAQ Sign-up link or from the join link on the top right hand corner of this page, then navigate to our forums here NetMoneyFAQ Forums

Google Alerts for Bloggers - Google has an awesome free service named Google Alerts which alerts its subscribers when a new web page is published page matching a specific Google search term. You as a blogger you can use this service to find out the latest news in your niche area and more importantly giving you the ability to get the first scoop in your niche area.

Getting the scoop and then promoting your piece to get lots of inbound links before anyone else will return huge results in terms of getting a top position in Google your articles targeted short or long tail keywords. If you can get the scoop often enough having articles appear at the top of Google search results for your articles this will have a significant impact on the total number of visitors to your site.

Then having a good plan and site design in place to convert these first time Google readers into return readers, RSS Readers and email list subscribers you will have a massive readership within no time, giving you all the benefits of having a large returning readership.

In addition of using Google Alerts to get the scoop I also use it to find out what other blogs and websites are writing about my blogs. Below is the method to do both:

Using Google Alerts to get a scoop

1. Getting the scoop involves creating a list of both long and short tail keywords and then setting a Google Alert for each. For a fictitious blog, about HDTV called HDTV Answers at HDTVAnswers.com, some of the keywords I would create Google Alerts, would include:

HDTV, “Panasonic HDTV”, “Panasonic LCD TV”, “Sony XYZ Model” ,etc

Also include the name of future models and technologies which are about the be released.

As you can imagine a significant list along similar lines to what has been created above would be created, you just need to think about what you would like to be alerted about.

2. Next navigate to Google Alerts at the following address http://www.google.com/alerts signing into your Google account, and setting up an alert for each keyword, remembering to enter keywords that contain multiple words in double quotes “Double Quote”

Selecting type as Comprehensive, will send you alerts for all the listed types (i.e. News, Blogs, Web, Video, Groups)

Select the frequency, select as-it-happens,  you do want that scoop don’t you! and enter the email address you want your alert to be sent to.

Finally an email will be sent to your selected email address confirming your alert, now wait for your first Google Alerts and your scoop to arrive.

Using Google Alerts to find out who and what others are saying about your blog

This works in much the same way but instead of adding your Google Alert with your keywords, you add your site name and main site URL as follows:

“HDTV Answers”

“HDTVAnswers”

link:HDTVAnswers.com

HDTVAnswers.com

After confirming your alerts you will know what everyone has to say about your blog, This information is great for building contacts and relationships with other bloggers

Finally if you need to modify or delete any of the Google Alerts you created just login to your Google Alerts account and select click here to manage your alerts

To Follow future updates to this post and to learn about new posts at NetMoneyFAQ sign up for the NetMoneyFAQ Feed

Text Link Ads on your Wordpress blog – Text Link Ads is a great little money earner for those with a semi established blog, which is why I decided to put together this quick Text Link Ads Implementation Guide for Wordpress, you are a Community Server blogger don’t despair I working on a similar guide for you too.

For those new to Text Link Ads and/or blogging, Text Link Ads is as the name suggests a money making program for your blog where you get paid to display advertisers Text Links on your blog. A good example is below on my blog the Business Travel Guru.  

So what differentiates Text Link Ads from other advertising programs is that you get paid a flat rate per month for each text link ad you display, which is determined by your Google pagerank and Alexa Rank and the best thing is the Text Link Ad company MediaWiz finds and arranges Text Link advertisers for you, leaving you to do what you do best, Blog!

What are the steps involved to get Text Link Ads installed on our blog

1. Sign up with Text Link Ads, their sign up page can be found here Text Link Ads Sign up page. Once approved move onto step 2, if not approved, keep up regular posts and link promotion then apply again later when your page rank and/or Alexa rank improves. See the following article on techniques that will improve these figures.

2. Configure and Download the Wordpress Text Link Ads control

The Text Link Ads Website will step you thru Wordpress plug-in configuration and download process, which I will outline below:

3. Install Wordpress plug-in

Copy your downloaded Text Link Ads Wordpress plug-in (in our case named recommended-links.php) to your /wp-content/plugins/ directory and enable the plug-in in the plug-ins menu of Wordpress.

4. Placement of Text Link Ads

If you plan on implementing Text Link Ads sidebar widget you will need to drag the Recommended Links module into the desired position in your sidebar.

If not using the Text Link Ads sidebar widget then paste the following code in the position where want the Text Link Ads to display.

<?php if(is_home()) tla_ads(); ?>

Now your text link ads plug-in will be configured and installed on your Wordpress blog.

Note if you have not sold any Text Link Ads on your site, for the first 12 hours a sample Text Link Ad will display, so you can determine if the plug-in is correctly configured/installed and that the HTML formatting looks as it should. After 12 hours nothing will be displayed until Text Link Ad inventory is sold on your blog.

How does Google treat Text Link Ads?

Google has recently cracked down on text link advertising, decreasing the PageRank of sites which have too many Text Links ads on their site, thru experience I have found there is some proactive measures you can implement you can implement to decrease the chance of Google decreasing your page rank due to link advertising.

To begin you should ensure you have the latest installed plug-ins from Text Link Ads, and you should regularly download and install the latest plug-in.

Next ensure your text link ads section is not titled with anything like the following Advertisers, Sponsors, Paid Links, Text Link Ads, Instead use a title like Recommended Links, Friends of XYZ Blog.   

One final note it’s not well known but publishers can specify their TLA ad cost, so once you start selling ad spots, consider getting the price of your ads increased, especially if your ad spots are selling quickly, as this is a good sign your TLA inventory is worth more, you can always reduce the price if your inventory stops selling. Just send a message to TLA support thru your TLA account.

After over 2 years NetMoneyFAQ has finally been redesigned, with a news and a much improved site design.  In addition to the re-design of NetMoneyFAQ, serious bandwidth and server stability issues has forced me to switch to a new dedicated server infrastructure for all my sites with Softlayer in the US.

At present only NetMoneyFAQ and The Business Travel Guru has been migrated to my new infrastructure at Softlayer, my sites will be migrated by the end of next week, after major re-design work for ExchangeIS.com and WindowsIS.com.

Migrating to a high end dedicated server infrastructure at one of Americas best dedicated hosting companies where the majority of my readers reside has had both some expected and unexpected benefits. On the expected side my sites will be able to sustain a larger number of page views on an infrastructure that is closer to my readers, on the partly unexpected side I am already seeing an increase in visitors, and page views particularly for US visitors along with a decrease in bounce rates.

Over the years I have suspected the Google search engine gives a higher keyword search result position for pages and sites hosted on servers which are located in the same country as its reader, for instance now that NetMoneyFAQ is hosted in the US if my theory is true NetMoneyFAQ should appear higher in Google search results for US readers. From the results I am seeing this is the case with, with a  significant increase in the number of US visitors, I will post an update soon with some hard evidence.

In terms of hosting Softlayer rocks, their datacenters, servers and support are the best, I highly recommend them as the best dedicated self managed hosting provider for either Linux or Windows.

If you have ever flown business or first class, you would really appreciate the additional room luxurious  interior, and service to be had, but just imagine if you owned a private VIP jet but not just any jet an Airbus A380 world’s largest commercial airliner.

When you are a prince in the Saudi royal family and one of the world’s richest men you can afford one, customized anyway you like.

The below pictures are one of the possible extravagant interior designs for Price Al-Walid’s Royal Airbus A380 which he currently has on order with Airbus. Which picture private lounges, dining areas, and bars. Gee life must be tough at the top.

More photos and the full story can be read at on The Business Travel Guru, article:

Extravagant Interior of the world’s first VIP Airbus A380 revealed

Qantas today started selling tickets for the first inaugural flight of its Airbus A380, this first Qantas A380 flight from Melbourne to Los Angeles will take place on Monday 20^th of October, and will be followed by the first Qantas Airbus A380 flight from Sydney to Los Angeles on Friday 24^th of October. These first two flights Melbourne Los Angeles return and Sydney Los Angeles return will be operated by the same aircraft named Nancy Bird-Walton (MSN014 VH-OQA).

Figure 1: Qantas A380 Nancy Bird-Walton (MSN014 VH-OQA) will operate first flight from 20th October 2008

For full details about the Qantas A380 Launch head over to The Business Travel Guru article: Qantas begin selling tickets on its first A380 Flight

It has been a long time coming, but good news has finally arrived. From next week Feedburner which was recently acquired by Google will start rolling out to a select number of publishers, Google Adsense for Feedburner.

While this is good news and will allow Feedburner publishers to add an additional source of income, the bad news is, unless you’re a publisher with thousands of subscribed readers; don’t expect to earn much the program. Past research has shown that ads in RSS Feeds generate a very low conversion rate.

The feedburner blog says the following:

So what will this mean for you? Well, publishers already in the FeedBurner Ad Network will continue to see premium CPM ads directly sold onto their content, but with the added bonus of contextually targeted ads that will fill up the remainder of their inventory. That means you get the best of both worlds: a dedicated Google sales force that knows how and why to sell onto your content, with the added revenue that full back-fill coverage provides. And with AdSense, you'll know that your back-filled ads are using the strongest contextual ad engine, ensuring the most relevant and profitable ads are delivered to your subscribers. And yes, ads are also sold via Google's AdWords program.
For publishers who are not yet placing ads in their feeds, any publisher who meets the requirements to join the AdSense program will also be able to use AdSense for feeds. You will be able to manage your feed ad units directly from AdSense Setup tab, and track performance right on the AdSense Report tab. You can slice, dice, mix, or mash your tracking across feed units and content units, or keep them totally separate. You're in control. You can still control the frequency and rules around when ads appear in your feeds, without having to mess with templates on your content management system.

In recent weeks I have been looking into replacing my current compact digital camera with something a little more substantial. The bottom line is I am awfully disappointed with the snaps taken on my Canon IXUS 65, its photos look washed out and lifeless, night and restaurant snaps are even worse. I purchased the IXUS 65 on a whim at duty free because my previous camera was stolen only days earlier and was attracted to the ultra compact size of the IXUS 65, given my reasonable experience in photography I should have known better, but when you are desperate and heading overseas you make uninformed decisions.

The camera on the top of my list is the Canon EOS 5D a Professional 12.8 MP full frame digital SLR, that has a reputation as one of the best entry level professional Digital SLRs. On further investigation I find the EOS 5D is rumored to be replaced within the next 6 months by a 16 Mega Pixel EOS 5D Mark II. 

Decision time what will I do?

Loving the latest gadgets, gizmos and technology I have decided to wait for the EOS 5D Mark II but in the mean time I will most likely purchase a stop gap camera that will meet my requirements for low light shots (Restaurant, Food photography). I am thinking of the Canon Powershot A650IS, because of its good zoom, image stability, and larger 1/1.7 CCD sensor. You can be assured this time I will take trip to my local camera shop to take a look at its images.

With some important events, product reviews and overseas trips coming up in the next few months which include the launch of the Qantas Airbus A380 and Emirates Airbus A380, my next camera is extremely important, so if you have any thoughts or recommendations about my choice I would be happy to hear your advice.

Last week Hoang Anh and I headed over to one our favorite eating places in Sydney, Dong Ba Bun Bo Hue in Bankstown, as the name suggests their specialty is Bun Bo Hue or Spicy Vietnamese Noodle Soup. Bun Bo Hue is the lesser known cousin to Pho in the western world, but in Vietnam, and in my opinion it’s as popular at the mighty Pho.

If you have never tried Bun Bo Hue like a little spice, I defiantly recommend giving it a try, and if you live in Sydney Dong Ba in either Bankstown or Cabramatta is a must, I rate their Bun Bo Hue as the best in Australia, and better than the majority found in Vietnam.

Best in Australia is a big title, but trust me I am married to a Vietnamese lady and we have tried Vietnamese food all over Vietnam and Australia.

Google Page Rank Update April 2008 - Yes you heard it here first Google are in the process of doing a page rank PR update, just checking on one of my newer websites The Business Travel Guru http://BizTravelGuru.com  it went up from a PR3 to a PR5. I was expecting this as I have put many hours into this site over the last few months both writing good quality articles and developing lots of good quality back links.

It’s a great result, and would love to hear from you, how did you go this PR update did you achieve your Google Page rank goal this round and what you are aiming for next update.

If you are relying on income from one advertising source you are truly not seeing the full earning potential of your blog or website. In many cases I have seen many websites run only Google Adsense the fact is that in the majority of cases Adsense will earn you many times less than some of the sources I will discuss below, but the great news is all of my recommended money makers below can be used together, on the one page earning more revenue than you could ever thru a single source.

To give an example of this Google Adsense across my network of sites earns me an average of US$3,000 per month, not a bad supplemental income you say, but that’s only a fraction of my networks total earnings, a good month will see an average of US$15,000 in total revenue across my network, and this figure is increasing rapidly as my sites become more popular and I optomize ad spots.

So what are my recommended money makers and how can they be used effectively together?

My recommended money makers are as follows (in no relevant order)

• Google Adsense
• Kontera
• ReviewMe
• Text Link Ads
• WidgetBucks
• Private Ad Sales

Google Adsense

To begin no you should not drop Google Adsense, it is an easy to get into and manage revenue stream, but the trick here is to look at the type of Google ad units you use and where you use them.

I find Adsense is great to use in the top right hand corner of a post the 250 X 250 Square or 300 X 250 Medium Rectangle is a great format to use here depending on space, both of these formats also work well with forums in forum posts.  The 728 X 80 Leaderboard a great format placed on the top it will get a lot of clicks especially if it is text only and matching the colour scheme of your page, this ad spot is one that I regularly sell directly to advertisers so Adsense gets moved very quickly from this position when I get a private ad sale.

Kontera

Kontera is an ad format that links or underlines words in your post, associating ads with the relevant keyword, I find Kontera does not earn me as much as Google but because of its style it can easily be used on a page without taking up additional ad spots, so it is a good additional money earner.  Kontera works well on pages that see lots of traffic and with sites frequented by readers that are not so internet savvy.

ReviewMe

ReviewMe is another great revenue earning option, as it also does not take any additional advertising spots. Rather advertising is in the form of a review post on your blog or website, promoting the product or service of the company that has ordered the review. For even slightly popular sites ReviewMe can be a big money spinner, earning sometimes four to eight times more than Google Adsense.

Text Link Ads

Text Link Ads is as its name suggests is a text link advertising system, simply place their ad code in a div where you want the Text Link Ads to display, your inventory then becomes live on the Text Link Ads website and available for purchase for a set monthly rate. The rate is determined by your websites Google Page Rank (PR) and Alexa rank. Your cut of the monthly rate is 50% which can be payed into a PayPal account.

This is personally one of my favourites because it is very easy to setup and you can earn a reasonable revenue from a relatively small ad area. I use Text Link Ads in the top of the right side bar.

WidgetBucks

WidgetBucks is a new shopping/price comparison widget, which offers one of the best returns per click for this style of ad. WidgetBucks and other shopping comparison widgets are best used on blogs and websites that publish product reviews. So run WidgetBucks and see how it goes if earning are terrible remove them for something better.

Private Ad Sales

Private Ad Sales, by far the best money earner, there is some additional administrative overhead looking after the accounts and adding/removing ads but the income is normally always great, in most cases more than all of your other revenue earning methods combined

I find selling ad spots on your own website works best if you have a popular high traffic website.  This by far is my best money earner across all of my websites and blog, and it empowering to know that you are cutting out the middle men, who in a lot of cases earn up to 50% of the commission.

If planning to sell Ad spots on your blog or website directly with advertisers, you need to setup an advertise here page, detailing the advertising spots available on your site, traffic details for your site, the cost for each ad spot and your terms, conditions and payment options.

You may not want to include traffic details or the cost of advertising spots, and only provide this information by email to genuine advertisers it’s up to you!

So you can see how multiple advertising revenue sources is the best option when looking to maximize your monthly revenue, I recommend experimenting with a few different programs with their different formats in different Ad spots to maximize your revenue. Give it a try and let us know how you go.

In the beginning blogging & internet marketing of websites can be a hard slog, putting in hours and not getting the readership and rewards you aspire to, which is why I decided to share with the blogging universe a few of the secrets that over time has made, many of my blogs & websites some of the most popular on the internet in their respective niche.

Blog because you are passionate about your niche area, and not to make money!  In recent years we have seen literally hundreds of thousands of blogs and websites that have been put up for the sole purpose of trying to make a quick buck. Well guess what these are the ones that fail first. It takes a lot of time dedication and commitment to make your blog successful let along make any decent money from them. If you love and truly know the niche you are writing about, It makes the blogging experience so much easier and enjoyable especially in those first few months when you wonder if anyone will ever read your blog or website.

Post regularly, Now depending on your niche regular could mean a few posts a day, or for more in-depth and technical blogs or websites regular could be 3 posts a week. Think about what type of blog or website you have and decide now how often you plan to post, then stick to it. If you don’t post regularly you will not capture regular readers. 

Develop friends and relationships with other bloggers, Developing relationships with other bloggers in your niche is extremely important, you should not see them as competitors but rather partners.

Readers of blogs and websites don’t read just one blog but many, developing a relationship with a fellow blogger is a two way street, both parties have something to gain by the relationship.  When you are starting out begin by doing some research and finding as many blogs that cover the same niche as yourself, pick out the best then send them an email mentioning you liked their blog and you also run a blog on the same topic, and would like to add their blog to your blog roll, then send them your URL so they can reciprocate.

Another option is if they have written a piece you like write about it on your blog with a link back to their original post.

You might write something like the following “Jerry over at ILoveToBlog has written a great post about how to turn one off visitors into regular readers, after following his tips you will be sure to have double the number of visitors in no time, you can read the full story here”

Eventually the relationship between blogs may even develop further with competitions, promotions, or offering other bloggers to become a guest blogger on your site occasionally while you are on holidays, and vice versa.

Encourage comment and discussion, This is all about developing relationships with your readers, and between your readers, in your post you should always encourage readers to comment about what you have written, this make the blogging process more than just a one way street, and gives readers the opportunity to ask you and other readers questions.

Competitions, promotions, and free stuff are other great ways to build relationships with your readers.

Have fun you don’t always post on topic, you could occasionally post a joke, recipe, picture, or anything other than your niche that you think readers in your target demographic may find appealing.  April fool’s day is one great example of this, where you can get your readers thinking you’re going to give it all up or buy a house in the outback to farm snails.

If you say you are going to do something do it, if you don’t you will come off looking uncommitted and unprofessional.

Keep active, you would have heard the analogy a rolling stone never gathers moss, over the years I have found the best way to achieve my blogging and article writing goals is to always keep active and try not to stop, I don’t mean never have a break or holiday, what I am saying, decide how many hours a day or week you will blog, a commit to it, without interruptions.

Keep yourself fit, it is a sad that over the last year some of the most popular bloggers have died, and it all comes down to their life style, sitting in front of a computer all day drinking lots of coffee & coke, not eating healthy foods, and getting very little sunlight or exercise. If you plan to become a full time blogger or do blogging after work why not take out gym membership and set aside 2 hours in your day to do some exercise then have a healthy meal, if the gym is not your scene try going for a good long hour long walk or bike ride. Personally I find exercise just before lunch energizing refreshing my mind and picking me up for the rest of the day.

Planning as far as I am concerned is one of the reasons why many bloggers don’t succeed. Planning allows you to layout your dreams and goals for the future, allowing you to stay focused on what you have set out as being important. Personally I break my planning into the following time frames

From Long term (greater than one year) then drill down to 12, 6, 3, 1 month 1 week and 1 day. With long term planning I look at where I want to be in the future with blogs/website and what I plan to achieve financially I then use this master plan to direct the rest of my planning.

So following these tips how long should it take you to start seeing reasonable traffic? This all depends on your niche and the amount of competition, but if you follow my tips above and you are covering a popular niche with not too much competition you should be able to see at least 1000/day within 6 months.