Blog Tips to Help You Make Money Blogging - ProBlogger
As submission to this week’s Writing Project I’ve just updated a list that I first posted a few days ago – my Essential Books for Bloggers list.
The list is now categorized and has the additional books that readers have submitted. There are a total of 65 books in the list. I’ve not read them all but respect those that suggested them and have just ordered a few of the newer ones to me.
I hope you find the list of books for bloggers helpful.
Update: Submissions are now closed on this project. See the full list of submissions here.
It’s time for another ProBlogger Group Writing Project – and this time we’ve got prizes worth around $1250 USD (see below for details)!
This week’s topic is ‘LISTS’ – something regular readers will know that I’m rather fond of.
Your task is to write a ‘list post’ (new posts please, not previously posted ones if possible) – or a post that is largely some type of list. It might be a ‘top ten’ type list, a ‘how to’ type list, a ‘my favorite…’ type list – whatever you like. I’ve chosen this topic because it’s adaptable to most topics (I’m looking forward to seeing the variety of types of lists that are submitted).
Once you’ve written your list simply follow the process for participating that I’ve outlined below.
This week’s group writing project is proudly sponsored by the following companies and individuals. Five random participants (it’s not a competition) in this week’s project will receive one of the following gifts (‘listed’ here in no particular order):
Thanks also to those others who offered to sponsor this week. Hopefully if this week goes well we’ll be able to do this again.
Today I came across a new blog (new to me) that caught my attention – LifeDev. I thought I’d share a few of their latest posts which got my attention and could be helpful for bloggers:
All in all – useful posts, nice design, intriguing titles and a blog to add to the RSS feed.
Microsoft has just announced Windows Live Writer today (downloadable from here if you’re a PC user).
I’m a Mac guy so it’s not something I can give you any recommendations on but it’s a blogging tool (in a similar class to other desktop blog editors) with most of the features that I’ve seen in other editor including WYSIWYG authoring, photo publishing, map publishing etc. It’s compatible with most main blogging platforms. Keep in mind it’s still in beta.
I’m hearing from a number of people that it’s quite good but until they cater for Mac users I’ll have to take others word for it.
If you’ve tried it – I’d love you to give us a mini review in comments below.
Read more about Live Writer at:
Chitika have just gone public with a new feature – Shoplincs – a CPC (cost per click) branded shop that you can host on your own domain and attatch to your blog/site.
Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been fortunate enough to be a part of a small (very small from what I can tell) beta test of ShopLinc and now that it’s public can tell you a little about it.
In effect what ShopLinc gives you is a shop for your blog where you are paid on a CPC basis (the same as eMiniMalls). Take a tour of shoplinc here.
The shop I’ve been testing is a Digital Camera Shop attached to my digital camera blog. You’ll see when going to it that it is customizable so as to integrate it to the rest of your blog (I’ve not done a brilliant job of this yet due to lack of time) and that you can have it on your own domain to further integrate it.
The four products featured on the front page of a shoplinc blog (in a multi-product eMiniMall and as separate products) are directly tied to the products you are writing about on your blog as they are driven via your RSS feed. This is a new approach that I’ve not seen anyone else doing to this point and ensures that people heading over to your shoplinc shop are seeing products that relate directly to the content you’re writing about (of course this assumes that your RSS feed is product specific).
Also on the front page of your shop are the last three recent posts from your RSS feed as well as a categories section that has links into other sections of the shoplinc. Categories include gadgets like Camcorders, Cell phones, digital cameras, MP3 Players and Printers but also include other products including Health and Beauty, Home and Garden and Clothing and Accessories).
Topping and tailing the central ‘shop section’ are customizable areas (a header and footer) in which you can put anything you like including banners back to your blog (as I currently have), other advertising (you can run chitika eMiniMalls here, AdSense ads etc) or you can leave them blank.
There is also a ‘search’ tool that lets visitors to your shoplinc search for products (from my initial analysis this seems to be being used quite a bit).
When visitors click on a product they are taken to a product page (here’s one for the new Sony Alpha A100 DSLR) which contains a number of elements. Firstly there is an eMiniMall unit, under that are a number of offers from different dealers offering the camera (a click on these is what earns you money) and to the left of this shopping area is a section for ‘research’ – firstly any related items on the product from your own blog (driving traffic back to your blog) and secondly any other research from other parts of the web.
To this point Shoplincs are not available to everyone – but there is talk on their blog of them opening up applications wider.
The following post is a list of books that would be helpful for bloggers – particularly those wishing to make a business from their blogging activities. It has been compiled both from my own suggestions as well as those of a number of other bloggers (see the bottom of the list for those who helped).
When I called for suggestions for books I said that they don’t have to be blogging specific (although they can be) but rather they should be books that help bloggers to improve any aspect of their blogging. As a result the topics in the list are quite wide and cover a range of topics including marketing, creative thinking, web development, other business topics as well as a few blog specific books. I’ve tried to put them in some sort of categories – however I don’t know all of them so please forgive me if my categories are not quite right. All books are linked to Amazon with affiliate links
Blogging
Copy Writing
The Official AdSense blog has posted a short tutorial on how to implement an A/B Test with your AdSense ads.
An A/B test sets up two different types of AdSense ads that rotate on your page in different configurations so that you can test which one works best for your site.
For example you could set it to track how two different color schemes perform in the one ad position or how different sized ad units do.
The first thing to do when setting up such a test is to set up two channels to track your results. Then use the javascript code below to rotate the ads.
Here’s the javascript code that they suggest you can use to run an A/B Test with your AdSense:
<script type=”text/javascript”>
var random_number = Math.random();
if (random_number < .5){
//your first ad unit code goes here
} else {
//your second ad unit code goes here
}
</script>
<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js”></script>
Replace “//your first ad unit goes here” with your ad code inside the first set of <script></script> tags.
It’s an experiment that is well worthwhile and it’s nice to see AdSense are making it possible. I’m sure however that there would be a more automated way to do it. For example they do allow publishers to rotate up to four color schemes in their ads at present – it’d be great if we could assign a different channel code to each color scheme to track it – in effect this could be a similar test.
I get a lot of emails from PreBloggers and NewBloggers who want to set up a WordPress Blog on their own domain and hosting but don’t know how to do it. It’s a common question and one I’ve been looking for resources on to point people to.
Over the last few days I’ve been watching a series of blogs by Jon Symons called RealBlogVideos (aff) that he’s put together to help new WordPress.org users set up their blogs – I suspect quite a few readers will find them useful (note: not everyone will – so read on and I’ll tell you who they’re for and who they are not for).
Jon makes his living from blogging on blogs like Art of Money and is a regular here at ProBlogger.
The videos cost $15 (US) to buy but for that you get 5 main videos and 3 bonus ones (a total of 162 minutes of instruction).
The main videos are on :
Bonus Videos
What are the videos like?
You can see from Jon’s sales page a sample of one of the videos that will give you an idea of what you’ll be buying. Here’s a few comments:
It struck me today as I sifted through a variety of questions from readers that the age of a blog brings with it a different set of challenges to their bloggers.
Bloggers with young blogs tends to ask one set of questions and bloggers with older blogs have their own set of ‘issues’ that they are tackling.
So what are the challenges that old and young blogs face? Here’s a few that come to mind – feel free to add your own in comments:
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My name is Darren Rowse and I’m a full time Blogger making a living from blogs like Digital Photography School and TwiTip - Twitter Tips.
In 2002 I stumbled upon an article about ‘Blogging’. I didn’t know it at the time but that moment changed my life. Read more about Darren or contact him. Connect with me on Twitter at , Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn.
