Chapter 4 Generating More Adsense Money
Forum Signature Files
One way to increase traffic to your blog is to post messages on internet forums. An internet forum is simply a message board where people gather to talk and form their own online communities. There are forums on just about any topic you can think of. Seriously, you would be surprised what topics you can find forums on! You can find forums on anything from childbirth to finance, from politics to world history, and literally every other topic in between.
Most online forums allow you to have a personalized signature file. Within this personal signature file you can generally put a link to your blog, a link to a website you own or frequent, your name, the city you live in, or any other basic information you choose to have visible to anyone who reads the forum messages. When you post a message on the forum, your signature file will automatically post the information you entered into it, at the bottom of each of the messages you post. Using a signature on forums can be a great way to get people to come and read your blog while being able to reach your target market easily.
What you will want to do first is to sign-up for forums which either relate directly to your topic, or where people with similar interests to your topic hang-out online, and then include the link back to your blog in your signature file. You want to make sure to only post good quality and more important relevant messages to the topic of the forum. You should aim to become a valuable participant in the forum. If your messages add value to the forum for the other community readers, and you get to know some of the other posters and build an online friendship, then they will likely check-out your blog and start reading it. When they find that they like your blog they will also post messages on their favorite forums about it and bring you more readers. They will begin to advertise your blog for you. What’s better than some passive advertising? Nothing!
What you do not want to ever do is join a forum and simply post about how great your blog is and how everyone should check it out. This is considered spamming and will result in you being banned from most forums, and might even get your blog itself shut-down. You will not gain any meaningful traffic from doing this. All you will do is irritate people and possibly get some nice rude comments added to your blog. People will not check out your blog because you say it is great.
Finding Forums of Interest
Finding forums which are relevant to the topic of your blog is a very easy thing to do. Suppose for a moment that you have a blog with a topic of “trout fishing.” You can simply go to www.google.com, or any other search engine you prefer to use, and type in “trout fishing +forum” and you get back 258,000 possible locations to visit for forums relating to trout fishing. The list which Google returns to you will include some duplicates and some other junk, but you will also find that there are more trout fishing forums than you ever imagined!
Because of the way search engines work, you will find that the most popular forums will show towards the top of the search result pages. Those are probably the best to join and get to know people in. Because they have a high search engine ranking tells you that they have a large membership and a good grasp of the topic of your interest. They are the most likely places where people who enjoy trout fishing are hanging out online.
As well as searching for “trout fishing,” you might also consider searching for other topics which would be of interest to other people who trout fish. Some of these topics might include subjects like backpacking, camping, fishing, fly fishing, hiking, outdoor life, outdoor recreation, living off the land, etc… Think about all of the other things you are interested in and think about whether or not others who trout fish would also be interested in those things. From there you can come up with relevant words to search and a whole new batch of forums to introduce yourself on and participate in.
If you think outside the box a bit you can come up with unlimited options of where to share links to your blog. The more ideas you can come up with then the more readers you can bring to your blog. The more readers to your blog then the more potential AdSense clicks and the more money in your bank account.
E-Mail Signature Files
Most every e-mail client these days offers you the ability to create a signature file. Even free e-mail accounts, such as Yahoo or Hotmail, allow you to create a signature file. Exactly the same as on an online message board or forum, this signature file is attached to each and every message you send out from your e-mail account. Think of all the people you send e- mail to each day and all of the possible new blog readers you can gain from this one simple signature file.
If you attach a link to your blog in every e-mail message you send out people will invariably click on it whether it has to do with what you e-mailed them about or not. People are very curious creatures and they want to know what’s up with other people and what they are thinking. Your blog allows them into your brain a bit, so they will click on the link to your blog and look it over.
These e-mail contacts may be potential blog readers who you would not have reached with online advertising in any other way. Using signature files allows you to easily reach a large variety of people yet not spend more than the couple minutes it takes to initially set up the signature file itself. And, if you have a good quality blog then it is entirely possible these new readers will pass along your link to all the people they know as well.
If you have multiple blogs and multiple e-mail accounts you can put links to all of your blogs in the signature files of each e-mail account or your can put one link per account. Try to think what will generate you the most traffic to the specific blogs you choose. You should always take the time to promote your own blogs and your own sites through your other blogs and sites; even if they are not directly related to each other. Your goal for any blog or website should always be to have the most visitors possible and you can do this through promoting your sites wherever you can both online and off.
Back-links Bring Traffic to Your Blog
One of the best ways to bring up your search engine rankings, and bring traffic to your blog, is by having a lot of back-links. A back-link is a link on someone else’s website to your blog. There are many ways to get back-links to your blog, you can write and submit articles to directories and other websites, you can write and submit a press release online, or you can simply post comments on other blogs which will then link back to your blog. Other ways to get back-links is to link all of your blog to one another and to link up with other blogger’s sites for the mutual benefit of all of you.
Article Submissions
There are many places online where you can submit a short (400-600 word) non-fiction article about something you know. This article could be your first blog posting, it could be something you come up with just to post on an article directory website, or it could be an article you have someone else ghostwrite and then publish under your own name. This is one time where having other people write for you probably isn’t a bad thing. As long as the article is good and sound it really doesn’t matter if it was written by you or a ghostwriter you hired to write it.
Submitting an article to an online article directory is free, simple, and easy. Simply turn one of your blog posts into an article which can stand alone, and then submit it to the article directory of your choice. (Some popular ones are articlealley.com, contentdesk.com, ezinearticles.com and goarticles.com.) There are also automated submission programs you can use to submit your articles to many article sites all at one time.
Attached to your article will be a “byline.” Your byline will contain information about you and a link to your blogs and other websites. You could have your byline read something like “Jane Smith is a programmer by day and blogs on horses at night. See her amazing programming website at www.iprogram.com and read her blog at www.besthorseblog.com.” This example byline just created two back-links for every time you publish the article; one to the programming site and another to the horse blog. If you post this article five times on the web you have ten back-links to your sites.
Also, many article sites allow you to publish non-exclusive rights articles on their sites. This means that you are free to post the same article on other article sites as well. Each time you submit the article you build links to your site. In addition, other bloggers and webmasters will link to these articles on their own relevant sites and that creates even more links for your site as well. By submitting articles to article directory websites you can build links easily to your site to increase your search engine rankings.
Press Release Submissions
If you were to start a small home business, one way to receive free advertising for it would be to send a press release to your local newspapers. Online there are a few press release websites where you can submit a free press release about your new blog or website. (The two most popular are prweb.com and prfree.com.)
To make a press release, simply write up a short statement about how awesome your newly launched site is and post it on the free press release websites. Make sure to have a link to your site in your press release and you have just created one additional back-link for each site you submitted your press release to. Press releases are a great way to get links without a lot of work. They can be short and to the point.
Blog Directory Submissions
Just as there are directories online for e-mail address, phone numbers, and other information, there are also directories which contain blog listings.
These blog directories are websites where people can go to find a whole list of blogs on any specific topic of interest to them. The search this directory, just like a search engine, and the results page is one of blogs which are on their topic.
Submitting your blogs to directories will help you to get both back-links and more readers to your blog. Both results will help with your search engine rankings as well as your AdSense ad revenue.
Comment on Other Blogs
Another way to create back-links to your blog is to post comments onto other people’s blogs and websites. If you leave quality comments then people just might want to find out what else you have to say on your own blog. If you leave comments on another Blogger blog, then your account will show up and your comments with automatically link back to your own blog. Readers of the blog will read your comments and click on your link to see what your blog is all about.
Some people will post a short message about enjoying a blog and then ask the blogger to check out their own blog and include the link to their own website. By simply leaving a spam message of “hey check out my blog” you will likely irritate people and not gain readers. Leave quality information and people are much more likely to check out your blog. You always want to make sure you are adding value to the web, not just out advertising your own blog to make money.
Team Up With Other Bloggers
Teaming up with other bloggers can be a great way to get links to your blog. You can have a one-way back-link to your website, or you can have reciprocal links. A reciprocal like is where you link to someone’s site and they link back to yours in exchange. Search engines prefer back-links over reciprocal links, but any link is better than none. And, the more links to your blog, ultimately the better.
Many bloggers have formed what is called a “blogroll.” A blogroll is a list of links to other blogs with similar topics of interest. This allows blogs to have back-links to them and also allows you to advertise your blog to the readers of all of the similar blogs. Blogrolls can be a great way to get new readers to your blog and to raise your search engine rankings at the same time.
Another thing bloggers will often do is trade posting message with another blogger. This trade of message posts is called “guest blogging.” Suppose for a moment that I have a successful blog on work at home opportunities.
Another blogger who I found online has a blog on stay at home parents. We could trade posts where I would allow her guest post on my blog about stay at home parents in exchange for my guest posting about work at home opportunities on her blog. We swap “guest” posts and each includes a byline with a link back to our own blog or website. I have a back-link and she has one as well.
By teaming up with other bloggers and guest blogging in this way you can have access to the loyal readers of another blog and they will have access to your blog. Because, in the example above, our blogs do not directly compete with each other for readers, we can be an added service to each other and to our respective readers. We can both build up our readership and also create some links to our site at the same time. This is a win-win situation for everyone involved in it.
Finding other bloggers to guest blog with is not difficult. If you take the time to develop a good blog, with quality content, then other bloggers with good quality blogs will want to exchange links and posts with you. The better your blog, the better guest opportunities you will have!