Get Paid for Sharing Ads on Your Social Networks

Friday, May 17, 2013

Name: Wingsplay
Quick Pitch: Earn money to share ads with your social network
Genius Idea: Wingsplay gives average people incentive to share ads with their social networks to drive product or service engagement and increase buzz.
Advertisers are sneaking into your Twitter and Facebook feeds — with help from your social media connections.
Wingsplay, a startup that launched last month, pays its users to share video ads on their social networks. The distribution model is key; it relies heavily on connected social networks. The founder, Olivier Lasry, says the best way for online advertisements to resonate with people is if a link has been recommended by a friend or social media connection.
Even though you may not Like or follow advertisers, ads could trickle into your feeds via a friend who is trying to make a quick buck or just likes to watch funny ads. Users can earn money by sharing up to four video ads per week. Users are paid by cost per view. The service is not meant to be used to spam social media, but more to drive conversations.
"The Web made it almost impossible to reach people with boring ads," Lasry said. "People don’t care about advertisers who interrupt them. But the opportunity is huge for remarkable video ads, which people actually want to watch and share.”
For example, Major League Soccer is promoting the April 14 Philadelphia v. Columbus soccer match on Wingsplay. After sharing the video, Wingsplay users are paid 21 cents each time someone from their social network clicks on the user's link and watches the MLS video featuring David Beckham.
But the financial incentive isn't enough for a person to share an ad. Lasry says users actually like the ads they choose to share.
"26% of our influencers shared the first videos we distributed on Wingsplay, which shows that influencers only share videos they like, and that the monetary incentive is only part of the experience," Lasry said.
Oxygen and NBC were the first big names to promote ads through Wingsplay in an effort to target a larger social media audience. The week before the new shows aired on NBC and Oxygen, both networks promote their new series through Wingsplay. Users shared a video trailer ad for the new ABC show "Awake," which premiered March 1 and Oxygen's March 26 premiere of "Brooklyn 11223."
Lasry said the site, which is still in beta, has started with trailers as a test. Moving forward, he wants the ads to be funny, gripping, cause-related or clever.
"[Trailers] might not be the best fit for our distribution model, but there are many of them and they give us a sense of the minimum performance that can be expected from our network," he said. "Given the results of our first campaigns, we expect funny ads to deliver an Earned:Paid ratio around 6, which is unheard of in the industry."
Lasry, who is originally from France, was inspired to start Wingsplay after seeing his friends share ads on their social networks. He figure if people are already sharing ads on Facebook, why not introduce advertisements through the consumer first? From there, real people can start coversations about the ads they're interested in.
Unlike celebrity brand ambassadors, the average social media user talks with friends on a personal level about the content he or she is sharing. People or more likely to enjoy the same things their friends like, Lasry said. So far, Wingsplay users are posting to Facebook most — 84% of all Wingsplay shares have been distributed on Facebook.
What do you think of advertising encroaching on your social networks? Does advertising make social media better or worse? Will you sign up for Wingsplay? Tell us in the comments.
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Surf anonymously without proxy with OperaTor

Thursday, May 16, 2013

Many of you don’t give a damn about security and privacy when its related to Internet stuff. The reasons behind this thinking varies from being ignorant of the consequences to some personal choices or laziness. But for many of you including me , security and privacy matters a lot when its online and easily accessible to anyone geeky enough.
So why anyone like me want to surf anonymously? The reasons include protecting personal data, to hide browsing activities from others, protecting your sensitive personal and business data,when you don’t want to leave traces of what you did surfing and many more.
There are many ways to do it like using a proxy server, hiding IP , tunneling software, clearing cache and cookies and few more methods. I will talk about something different here.
OperaTor is a portable version of Opera browser powered jointly byOpera Browser, Tor and Polipo which lets you surf anonymously.

You can just save it in your portable device and plug it in the computer you need to surf when. Just run it and start surfing anonymously. None of your data will be stored anywhere.
The setup is just 7 MB in size. Just a note here. Its only for Windows operating systems and not others. Also, as per its website:
The only protocols which OperaTor anonymizes are HTTP and HTTPS, thus if you want to stay anonymous you should avoid using other Opera features (e.g. Java, JavaScript, Bittorrent, integrated e-mail and IRC clients).
It doesn’t take much memory to run and the fastest browser as its based on Opera. Download it here from two sources.
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How To Get A Free Payoneer MasterCard Debit Card PreLoaded with Free $25!

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

How to get a Free Payoneer Debit Card?
Before we get started, it is good we know what is payoneer and how it can help every bloggers and anyone who are looking for a free way to get international debit card.
get free payoneer card
(Photo Credit:: Payoneer)
According to wikipedia Payoneer is an Internet-based financial services business that allows users to transfer money and receive payments through re-loadable prepaid MasterCard® debit cards.
The Benefit of Having a Payoneer MasterCard®
There are lots of benefit of having a Payoneer debit card, but am going to list a few here.
1. Most top freelancing and affiliate websites have payoneer as their payment options, this companies are Freelancer, Elance, Fiverr, infolinks, Reviewme, Clickbank, CJ, plimus, ShareAsell, oDesk and Amazon. Etc. You can withdraw your earnings flawlessly without any problem and then withdraw your cash at any ATM Machine that has the MasterCard® Logo.
2. With your Payoneer Debit Card, you can also withdraw your money from 2checkout and Moneybooker. You can also withdraw your money from Amazon affiliate program!
3. You can use the Payoneer debit card to buy stuffs online and in any local supermarket, you can use it to pay for any service where MasterCard® is accepted.
4. You can withdraw from your Paypal account to your payoneer debit card, (we will be writing full post on how to achieve this in our next post).
5. You can earn money online into your payoneer debit card by joining programs that have the payoneer payment option.
6. How to Receive payment from your friends, family abroad, payoneer has made it possible to receive or send money to your debit card from anywhere in the world. You can ask your family to fund your account directly without going through the stress of bank.
7. Payoneer has one of the best customer service worldwide! You get reply to any questions or queries you might have. And if you have any problem with their service, one of their worker will get in touch with you instantly, all you need to do is to contact them.
How To Get Payoneer Debit Card Free?
Some payoneer partners will required you to pay before getting your card, but by signing up directly with payoneer, you will get the card free and also you get an instant $25 deposited into your account when you have transact load upto $100 in your account. So click on the link below to get your payoneer debit card free!
CLICK HERE TO GET PAYONEER DEBIT CARD FREE
Recurring Fees of Using Payoneer Debit Card
Most people failed to outline clearly the fees it takes to operate a payoneer account. From every withdrawal you made using ATM, you are bill $2.15, see the full spec below. (The below is taken directly from payoneer website)
Loading Fees for Payoneer.
You can load a Payoneer Prepaid MasterCard with a credit or debit card.
Transfer from a checking or savings account
1.00%
1.00%
4-7 business days
Visa
3.75% of loaded amount
3.75% of loaded amount
up to 2 business days
MasterCard
3.75% of loaded amount
3.75% of loaded amount
up to 2 business days
Some useful information about price and fees for payoneer debit card user.
* Card loading charge $3 (within 2 business days) & $5 for immediate load. (for odesk $2 urgent and $0 for regular load) other website may vary with there condition.
* Transaction charge $2.75 (included vat)/per transaction. (for ATM charge per transaction)
* Monthly maintain charge $3/month.
* Card to card transfer charge $0.50 only. some card are not supported to balance transfer.
* Minimum balance transfer amount $20 and high amount$1000.
* You can withdraw 3 time in a days mean 3 transaction is available every 24 hours.
* Card replace charge $9.95 (generally) may be different by place/country.
* Card validity 1 years some time are 2 years.
What to do if you lost your payoneer debit card?
All you need to do is contact payoneer and your card will be replace immediately and the fee is $9.95
On how next post, we will write more on how to withdraw from your paypal account to your payoneer debit card, and then, we are going to lists the legit websites that you can join and earn money online free
Can i withdraw money from payza/alertpay to Payoneer?
Currently, Payoneer does not support withdrawing money from Alertpay/payza to your payoneer debit card. Please ignore any other claim that says this is possible.
If there is any error on this post, please let me know and i will correct it asap.
Have you register for your payoneer account yet?
CLICK HERE TO GET PAYONEER DEBIT CARD FREE

get free payoneer card

.
(Photo Credit:: Payoneer)
What are the Requirement for Verifying my Payoneer debit card?
Before you are issued a payoneer debit card, you will first provide valid information about yourself. They include.
* Your Name
* Identity Card, (Driver’s licence, International card, Voter’s card, National ID Card or any other original legit identity card)
After submitting your details, Payoneer will confirm the authenticity of your documents and then ship your card to you. (it might take up to 14 days to 2months to receive your card)
Also you have the option of using DHL to receive your payoneer card, and it will take less than 5 days! Though this service is not free.
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Make Money With Payoneer Debit Card Free

Make Money Online with Your Payoneer Debit Card
I was looking at the many search term and noticed much people are looking for ways to make money online with payoneer debit card, since most countries are not allowed to use paypal, so here i will be discussing in a series, one of the many ways one can easily earn money through payoneer debit card.
This method required that you have a website or blog before you start earning, what you need to start is just a blog with good traffic and alexa rank. You will get accepted and start making fast money to your payoneer debit card account, or if you are still looking for a better free way to get your payoneer debit card then use this link Make Money with Paid to review and Payoneer debit Card register there with any website, from there you will click on how to get paid with them, then select payoneer, you will be redirected to payoneer website there you will complete your registration and then wait for your card to get approved, after that, you can get it shipped to your address in less than 40 days depending where you are.
Do you have a blog? Or a website? Then start earning money with your website and get paid to payoneer debit card, for those who don’t have a high traffic website, i will share with you another money making website that accept any blog on blogger or wordpress as long as you have unique content on your site.
Make Money with Paid to review and Payoneer debit Card using that link will guarantee your acceptance quickly to get start earning with your website and also getting a free payoneer debit card without selling.
keep in touch as i will be updating this post or write a new post on the other different methods of earning with payoneer debit card, and what will follow next will blow your mind off!
I will be posting a very interesting website where you will get paid to write and you receive your money straight to your paypal account or Payoneer debit card account.
Start making money online!
Lets meet on Top!.
Update: I failed to make it clear here that with this website you can get your payoneer debit card free without selling or promoting any affiliate programs, most others partners you need to sell one of their products before your payoneer card will activated, so register and get your free payoneer debit card —> Make Money with Paid to review and Payoneer debit Card.
UPDATE:: GET Payoneer Prepaid Debit MasterCard Free+ $25 For Free
Now this is the best deal you will ever have, you will sign up with Payoneer directly from the link below and get free $25 credited to Your payoneer debit card which you can withdraw from any ATM machine that has MasterCard Logo or you can use it to shop online.
Note. To be eligible for the Payoneer $ 25 For Free loaded to your card. You MUST register with the link provided below, Get Free Payoneer Debit Card or you can register directly from this Link
To Make Money Online, you need to have means of how to withdraw your earnings. Payoneer is one of the best way to withdraw your cash. You can even use your local bank to load money into your payoneer debit card.
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Upload Your Photos Online & earn money

There are different ways to make money online from the internet that even though you are a newbie, you can still earn enough money to buy your domain and start your first website.
I want to share with you Verified Affiliate programmes that pay you to upload your photos/pictures.
You must have heard pay per upload and this time you can earn by uploading your Photos.
Before joining any of the programs, you are advice to read the terms and conditions so you don’t waste your time.
You can earn up to $4 per 1000 unique views.
Are you passionate about taking pictures of God’s beautiful creatures? Are you a professional photographer or you are just a beginner in the industry? Whatever the case maybe, you are welcome to upload your photos and get paid!!
Lists of Websites that Pay you to Upload Photos
1. Site here pay up to $3.50/1000 unique views
2. Site here pay up to $4.00/1000 unique views
3. Site here pay up to $2.60/1000 unique views
4. Site here pay up to $3.50/1000 unique views.
5. Site here pay up to $3.00/1000 unique views.
6. Site here
this is a new sister company of imgmoney, it has not been tested yet, but i know for such you will get paid from it as imgmoney is a legit site that has been paying for years now.
You can easily make money online uploading your photos to this websites and get paid for it.
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How to choose a good ad network?

Friday, August 17, 2012

This is a basic check list for any publisher to find an ad network that is suitable and profitable for your website.

Niche vs Generic

If your blog and website has a strong focus in a particular field and your visitors generally share the same interests, then a Vertical ad network is what you should look for. This type of ad network serves a signature niche and targets a relevant and specific demographic, connecting advertisers and publishers that share the same interests or belong to the same industry. This is a very effective platform to reach the right target audience. Some examples include The Deck, Federated Media.
Horizontal ad network is the kind of network that dwells in all categories. Its inventory is extensive and generic. Horizontals offer a massive reach for advertisers and publishers. Some examples include ValueClick, AOL Advertising.

Compensations

One important factor when joining an ad network is to know how you will be paid. How effective are they selling your ad space, at what rate, and how much of that will actually reach you? These are the 3 most common ways your ad displays will be compensated:
1. CPM
Cost per Thousand Impressions ad networks pay publishers for every 1000 impressions, or ad views. This is a great choice for websites and blogs with high traffic since the large number of visitors equals more revenue. This also allows you to predict your advertising revenue monthly based on your website traffic. The downside of CPM networks is that they can be difficult to join with minimum impression requirement, or they offer CPMs that are too low to turn into a significant source of advertising revenue. For publishers, CPM is one of the best ways to monetize because the greater your site traffic is, the more revenue you can earn. Some CPM networks include CasaleMedia, TribalFusion, ValueClick.
2. CPA
Cost per Action (Acquisition) programs reward publishers only when visitors purchase the product or service from the advertiser after visiting your website. These advertisements award high payouts. However, your earnings depend entirely on the visitors' purchase and the effectiveness of the ad copy. If they do not buy any product, you do not earn any revenue. Typically, CPA is more effective if the website has high traffic and a particular focus that compliments with the products being advertised. For example, if your site is about movie reviews, a ticket-seller program will perform a lot better than an art-and-craft website. If the theme of your website does not compliment the ads, it will be hard to earn from the CPA model. Some networks include CommissionJunction, LinkShare.
3. CPC
Cost per Click advertisement is easier to monetize than the CPA model since it rewards publishers for each click. The upside is that CPC has the potential to turn small levels of traffic into revenue, and these ad blocks are easy to set up. The downside is that revenue can be inconsistent since it depends on the customers' choice and interest to click. Ad placement location, niche, and visual appeal are some of the factors that can enhance the effectiveness of CPC ads. Examples include Google AdSense, Yahoo for Publisher.

Business model of ad network

All these CPC, CPA, CPM rates do not mean you earn 100% of the money. Ad networks get a significant commission from your earnings and have control over your paid inventory. If the network can only accommodate 50% of your total inventory, you would need to fill 50% of it with something else or risk losing money to the default public-service ads served by the network.
The effective CPM is a good way to measure your actual earning. For example: Your ad network is selling $10 CPMs and you have 10,000 page views, each page has one ad. Your potential revenue is $100. Let's assume that they are selling half of the inventory on your site, meaning 5,000 of your pages have ads and the rest do not. That means maximum revenue is $50. Assuming there's a 5% ($2.5) admin fee for the ad network, total revenue is down to $47.5. If the revenue split is 50/50, your ad network keeps $23.75 and you get $23.75. Thus, your net effective CPM is $2.37, or $2.37 for every 1000 impressions.

Reliability and Credibility

Ad network commissions can be significant, that is why it is important that you select one carefully. As with all business, you only want to partner with credible companies. You should take into consideration the company history by asking questions such as how long they have been in the business, how often they pay, or if they have a history of withholding payment. More research at the beginning will save you time and effort in the long run.

Control over your ads

You only want ads that can generate revenue and attract visitors. If you have a specific demographic that will not tolerate certain images and topics, then you should take into consider how much control you have over the ads. Is it possible to turn off undesirable ads such as gambling services, adult services, or ads from your competitors?

Integration with your ad server

After you have narrowed down the number of prospective ad networks, you should also consider their compatibility with your ad server. Some ad server will not accept third-party networks or limit the number or type of ad networks to serve. AdSpeed Ad Server does not believe in these restrictions. We believe the publisher is the one who determines what is best for his/her business and website. We serve ads from all legal ad networks and advertisers. Research and choose the right ad server that can maximize your earning from multiple ad networks and also from your directly-sold ad inventory.
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Top 10 Way to MAKE WEBSITE TRAFFIC and BLOG TRAFFIC

Thursday, July 19, 2012

It's easy to build a blog, but hard to build a successful blog with significant traffic. Over the years, we've grown the Moz blog to nearly a million visits each month and helped lots of other blogs, too. I launched a personal blog late last year and was amazed to see how quickly it gained thousands of visits to each post. There's an art to increasing a blog's traffic, and given that we seem to have stumbled on some of that knowledge, I felt it compulsory to give back by sharing what we've observed.
 
NOTE: This post replaces a popular one I wrote on the same topic in 2009. This post is intended to be useful to all forms of bloggers - independent folks, those seeking to monetize, and marketing professionals working an in-house blog from tiny startups to huge companies. Not all of the tactics will work for everyone, but at least some of these should be applicable and useful.

#1 - Target Your Content to an Audience Likely to Share

When strategizing about who you're writing for, consider that audience's ability to help spread the word. Some readers will naturally be more or less active in evangelizing the work you do, but particular communities, topics, writing styles and content types regularly play better than others on the web. For example, great infographics that strike a chord , beautiful videos that tell a story  and remarkable collections of facts that challenge common assumptions  are all targeted at audiences likely to share (geeks with facial hair, those interested in weight loss and those with political thoughts about macroeconomics respectively).
A Blog's Target Audience

If you can identify groups that have high concentrations of the blue and orange circles in the diagram above, you dramatically improve the chances of reaching larger audiences and growing your traffic numbers. Targeting blog content at less-share-likely groups may not be a terrible decision (particularly if that's where you passion or your target audience lies), but it will decrease the propensity for your blog's work to spread like wildfire across the web.

#2 - Participate in the Communities Where Your Audience Already Gathers

Advertisers on Madison Avenue have spent billions researching and determining where consumers with various characteristics gather and what they spend their time doing so they can better target their messages. They do it because reaching a group of 65+ year old women with commercials for extreme sports equipment is known to be a waste of money, while reaching an 18-30 year old male demographic that attends rock-climbing gyms is likely to have a much higher ROI.
Thankfully, you don't need to spend a dime to figure out where a large portion of your audience can be found on the web. In fact, you probably already know a few blogs, forums, websites and social media communities where discussions and content are being posted on your topic (and if you don't a Google search will take you much of the way). From that list, you can do some easy expansion using a web-based tool like Double Click's Ad Planner:
Sites Also Visited via DoubleClick

Once you've determined the communities where your soon-to-be-readers gather, you can start participating. Create an account, read what others have written and don't jump in the conversation until you've got a good feel for what's appropriate and what's not. I've written a post here about rules for comment marketing, and all of them apply. Be a good web citizen and you'll be rewarded with traffic, trust and fans. Link-drop, spam or troll and you'll get a quick boot, or worse, a reputation as a blogger no one wants to associate with.

#3 - Make Your Blog's Content SEO-Friendly

Search engines are a massive opportunity for traffic, yet many bloggers ignore this channel for a variety of reasons that usually have more to do with fear and misunderstanding than true problems. As I've written before, "SEO, when done right, should never interfere with great writing." In 2011, Google received over 3 billion daily searches from around the world, and that number is only growing:
Daily Google Searches 2004-2011

sources: Comscore + Google
Taking advantage of this massive traffic opportunity is of tremendous value to bloggers, who often find that much of the business side of blogging, from inquiries for advertising to guest posting opportunities to press and discovery by major media entities comes via search.
SEO for blogs is both simple and easy to set up, particularly if you're using an SEO-friendly platform like Wordpress, Drupal or Joomla. For more information on how to execute on great SEO for blogs,
Don't let bad press or poor experiences with spammers (spam is not SEO) taint the amazing power and valuable contributions SEO can make to your blog's traffic and overall success. 20% of the effort and tactics to make your content optimized for search engines will yield 80% of the value possible; embrace it and thousands of visitors seeking exactly what you've posted will be the reward.

#4 - Use Twitter, Facebook and Google+ to Share Your Posts & Find New Connections

Twitter just topped 465 million registered accounts. Facebook has over 850 million active users. Google+ has nearly 100 million. LinkedIn is over 130 million. Together, these networks are attracting vast amounts of time and interest from Internet users around the world, and those that participate on these services fit into the "content distributors" description above, meaning they're likely to help spread the word about your blog.
Leveraging these networks to attract traffic requires patience, study, attention to changes by the social sites and consideration in what content to share and how to do it. My advice is to use the following process:
  • If you haven't already, register a personal account and a brand account at each of the following - Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn (those links will take you directly to the registration pages for brand pages). For example, my friend Dharmesh has a personal account for Twitter and a brand account for OnStartups (one of his blog projects). He also maintains brand pages on Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+.
  • Fill out each of those profiles to the fullest possible extent - use photos, write compelling descriptions and make each one as useful and credible as possible. Research shows that profiles with more information have a significant correlation with more successful accounts (and there's a lot of common sense here, too, given that spammy profiles frequently feature little to no profile work).
  • Connect with users on those sites with whom you already share a personal or professional relationships, and start following industry luminaries, influencers and connectors. Services like FollowerWonk and FindPeopleonPlus can be incredible for this:
Followerwonk Search for "Seattle Chef"

  • Start sharing content - your own blog posts, those of peers in your industry who've impressed you and anything that you feel has a chance to go "viral" and earn sharing from others.
  • Interact with the community - use hash tags, searches and those you follow to find interesting conversations and content and jump in! Social networks are amazing environment for building a brand, familiarizing yourself with a topic and the people around it, and earning the trust of others through high quality, authentic participation and sharing
If you consistently employ a strategy of participation, share great stuff and make a positive, memorable impression on those who see your interactions on these sites, your followers and fans will grow and your ability to drive traffic back to your blog by sharing content will be tremendous. For many bloggers, social media is the single largest source of traffic, particularly in the early months after launch, when SEO is a less consistent driver.

#5 - Install Analytics and Pay Attention to the Results

At the very least, I'd recommend most bloggers install Google Analytics (which is free), and watch to see where visits originate, which sources drive quality traffic and what others might be saying about you and your content when they link over. If you want to get more advanced, check out this post on 18 Steps to Successful Metrics and Marketing.
Here's a screenshot from the analytics of my wife's travel blog, the Everywhereist:
Traffic Sources to Everywhereist from Google Analytics

As you can see, there's all sorts of great insights to be gleaned by looking at where visits originate, analyzing how they were earned and trying to repeat the successes, focus on the high quality and high traffic sources and put less effort into marketing paths that may not be effective. In this example, it's pretty clear that Facebook and Twitter are both excellent channels. StumbleUpon sends a lot of traffic, but they don't stay very long (averaging only 36 seconds vs. the general average of 4 minutes!).
Employing analytics is critical to knowing where you're succeeding, and where you have more opportunity. Don't ignore it, or you'll be doomed to never learn from mistakes or execute on potential.

#6 - Add Graphics, Photos and Illustrations (with link-back licensing)

If you're someone who can produce graphics, take photos, illustrate or even just create funny doodles in MS Paint, you should leverage that talent on your blog. By uploading and hosting images (or using a third-party service like Flickr to embed your images with licensing requirements on that site), you create another traffic source for yourself via Image Search, and often massively improve the engagement and enjoyment of your visitors.
When using images, I highly recommend creating a way for others to use them on their own sites legally and with permission, but in such a way that benefits you as the content creator. For example, you could have a consistent notice under your images indicating that re-using is fine, but that those who do should link back to this post. You can also post that as a sidebar link, include it in your terms of use, or note it however you think will get the most adoption.
Some people will use your images without linking back, which sucks. However, you can find them by employing the Image Search function of "similar images," shown below:
Google's "Visually Similar" Search

Clicking the "similar" link on any given image will show you other images that Google thinks look alike, which can often uncover new sources of traffic. Just reach out and ask if you can get a link, nicely. Much of the time, you'll not only get your link, but make a valuable contact or new friend, too!

#7 - Conduct Keyword Research While Writing Your Posts

Not surprisingly, a big part of showing up in search engines is targeting the terms and phrases your audience are actually typing into a search engine. It's hard to know what these words will be unless you do some research, and luckily, there's a free tool from Google to help called the AdWords Keyword Tool.
Type some words at the top, hit search and AdWords will show you phrases that match the intent and/or terms you've employed. There's lots to play around with here, but watch out in particular for the "match types" options I've highlighted below:
Google AdWords Tool

When you choose "exact match" Ad-words will show you only the quantity of searches estimated for that precise phrase. If you use broad match, they'll include any search phrases that use related/similar words in a pattern they think could have overlap with your keyword intent (which can get pretty darn broad). "Phrase match" will give you only those phrases that include the word or words in your search - still fairly wide-ranging, but between "exact" and "broad."
When you're writing a blog post, keyword research is best utilized for the title and headline of the post. For example, if I wanted to write a post here on Moz about how to generate good ideas for bloggers, I might craft something that uses the phrase "blog post ideas" or "blogging ideas" near the front of my title and headline, as in "Blog Post Ideas for When You're Truly Stuck," or "Blogging Ideas that Will Help You Clear Writer's Block."
Optimizing a post to target a specific keyword isn't nearly as hard as it sounds. 80% of the value comes from merely using the phrase effectively in the title of the blog post, and writing high quality content about the subject. If you're interested in more, read Perfecting Keyword Targeting and On-Page Optimization (a slightly older resource, but just as relevant today as when it was written).

#8 - Frequently Reference Your Own Posts and Those of Others

The web was not made for static, text-only content! Readers appreciate links, as do other bloggers, site owners and even search engines. When you reference your own material in-context and in a way that's not manipulative (watch out for over-optimizing by linking to a category, post or page every time a phrase is used - this is almost certainly discounted by search engines and looks terrible to those who want to read your posts), you potentially draw visitors to your other content AND give search engines a nice signal about those previous posts.
Perhaps even more valuable is referencing the content of others. The biblical expression "give and ye shall receive," perfectly applies on the web. Other site owners will often receive Google Alerts or look through their incoming referrers (as I showed above in tip #5) to see who's talking about them and what they're saying. Linking out is a direct line to earning links, social mentions, friendly emails and new relationships with those you reference. In its early days, this tactic was one of the best ways we earned recognition and traffic with the SEOmoz blog and the power continues to this day.

#9 - Participate in Social Sharing Communities Like Reddit + StumbleUpon

The major social networking sites aren't alone in their power to send traffic to a blog. Social community sites like Reddit (which now receives more than 2 billion! with a "B"! views each month), StumbleUpon, Pinterest, Tumblr, Care2 (for nonprofits and causes), GoodReads (books), Ravelry (knitting), Newsvine (news/politics) and many, many more (Wikipedia maintains a decent, though not comprehensive list here).
Each of these sites have different rules, formats and ways of participating and sharing content. As with participation in blog or forum communities described above in tactic #2, you need to add value to these communities to see value back. Simply drive-by spamming or leaving your link won't get you very far, and could even cause a backlash. Instead, learn the ropes, engage authentically and you'll find that fans, links and traffic can develop.
These communities are also excellent sources of inspiration for posts on your blog. By observing what performs well and earns recognition, you can tailor your content to meet those guidelines and reap the rewards in visits and awareness. My top recommendation for most bloggers is to at least check whether there's an appropriate subreddit in which you should be participating. Subreddits and their search function can help with that.

#10 - Guest Blog (and Accept the Guest Posts of Others)

When you're first starting out, it can be tough to convince other bloggers to allow you to post on their sites OR have an audience large enough to inspire others to want to contribute to your site. This is when friends and professional connections are critical. When you don't have a compelling marketing message, leverage your relationships - find the folks who know you, like you and trust you and ask those who have blog to let you take a shot at authoring something, then ask them to return the favor.
Guest blogging is a fantastic way to spread your brand to new folks who've never seen your work before, and it can be useful in earning early links and references back to your site, which will drive direct traffic and help your search rankings (diverse, external links are a key part of how search engines rank sites and pages). Several recommendations for those who engage in guest blogging:
  • Find sites that have a relevant audience - it sucks to pour your time into writing a post, only to see it fizzle because the readers weren't interested. Spend a bit more time researching the posts that succeed on your target site, the makeup of the audience, what types of comments they leave and you'll earn a much higher return with each post.
  • Don't be discouraged if you ask and get a "no" or a "no response." As your profile grows in your niche, you'll have more opportunities, requests and an easier time getting a "yes," so don't take early rejections too hard and watch out - in many marketing practices, persistence pays, but pestering a blogger to write for them is not one of these (and may get your email address permanently banned from their inbox).
  • When pitching your guest post make it as easy as possible for the other party. When requesting to post, have a phenomenal piece of writing all set to publish that's never been shared before and give them the ability to read it. These requests get far more "yes" replies than asking for the chance to write with no evidence of what you'll contribute. At the very least, make an outline and write a title + snippet.
  • Likewise, when requesting a contribution, especially from someone with a significant industry profile, asking for a very specific piece of writing is much easier than getting them to write an entire piece from scratch of their own design. You should also present statistics that highlight the value of posting on your site - traffic data, social followers, RSS subscribers, etc. can all be very persuasive to a skeptical writer.
A great tool for frequent guest bloggers is Ann Smarty's MyBlogGuest, which offers the ability to connect writers with those seeking guest contributions (and the reverse).
MyBlogGuest
Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ are also great places to find guest blogging opportunities. In particular, check out the profiles of those you're connected with to see if they run blogs of their own that might be a good fit. Google's Blog Search function and Google Reader's Search are also solid tools for discovery.

#11 - Incorporate Great Design Into Your Site

The power of beautiful, usable, professional design can't be overstated. When readers look at a blog, the first thing they judge is how it "feels" from a design and UX perspective. Sites that use default templates or have horrifying, 1990's design will receive less trust, a lower time-on-page, fewer pages per visit and a lower likelihood of being shared. Those that feature stunning design that clearly indicates quality work will experience the reverse - and reap amazing benefits.
Blog Design Inspiration

These threads - 1, 2, 3 and 4 - feature some remarkable blog designs for inspiration
If you're looking for a designer to help upgrade the quality of your blog, there's a few resources I recommend:
  • Dribbble - great for finding high quality professional designers
  • Forrst - another excellent design profile community
  • Behance - featuring galleries from a wide range of visual professionals
  • Sortfolio - an awesome tool to ID designers by region, skill and budget
  • 99 Designs - a controversial site that provides designs on spec via contests (I have mixed feelings on this one, but many people find it useful, particularly for budget-conscious projects)
This is one area where budgeting a couple thousand dollars (if you can afford it) or even a few hundred (if you're low on cash) can make a big difference in the traffic, sharing and viral-impact of every post you write.

#12 - Interact on Other Blogs' Comments

As bloggers, we see a lot of comments. Many are spam, only a few add real value, and even fewer are truly fascinating and remarkable. If you can be in this final category consistently, in ways that make a blogger sit up and think "man, I wish that person commented here more often!" you can achieve great things for your own site's visibility through participation in the comments of other blogs.
Combine the tools presented in #10 (particularly Google Reader/Blog Search) and #4 (especially FollowerWonk) for discovery. The feed subscriber counts in Google Reader can be particularly helpful for identifying good blogs for participation. Then apply the principles covered in this post on comment marketing.
Google Reader Subscriber Counts

Do be conscious of the name you use when commenting and the URL(s) you point back to. Consistency matters, particularly on naming, and linking to internal pages or using a name that's clearly made for keyword-spamming rather than true conversation will kill your efforts before they begin.

 

 

#13 - Participate in Q+A Sites

Every day, thousands of people ask questions on the web. Popular services like Yahoo! Answers, Answers.com, Quora, StackExchange, Formspring and more serve those hungry for information whose web searches couldn't track down the responses they needed.
The best strategy I've seen for engaging on Q+A sites isn't to answer every question that comes along, but rather, to strategically provide high value to a Q+A community by engaging in those places where:
  • The question quality is high, and responses thus far have been thin
  • The question receives high visibility (either by ranking well for search queries, being featured on the site or getting social traffic/referrals). Most of the Q+A sites will show some stats around the traffic of a question
  • The question is something you can answer in a way that provides remarkable value to anyone who's curious and drops by
I also find great value in answering a few questions in-depth by producing an actual blog post to tackle them, then linking back. This is also a way I personally find blog post topics - if people are interested in the answer on a Q+A site, chances are good that lots of folks would want to read it on my blog, too!
Just be authentic in your answer, particularly if you're linking. If you'd like to see some examples, I answer a lot of questions at Quora, frequently include relevant links, but am rarely accused of spamming or link dropping because it's clearly about providing relevant value, not just getting a link for SEO (links on most user-contributed sites are "nofollow" anyway, meaning they shouldn't pass search-engine value). There's a dangerous line to walk here, but if you do so with tact and candor, you can earn a great audience from your participation.

#14 - Enable Subscriptions via Feed + Email (and track them!)

If someone drops by your site, has a good experience and thinks "I should come back here and check this out again when they have more posts," chances are pretty high (I'd estimate 90%+) that you'll never see them again. That sucks! It shouldn't be the case, but we have busy lives and the Internet's filled with animated gifs of cats.
In order to pull back some of these would-be fans, I highly recommend creating an RSS feed using Feedburner and putting visible buttons on the sidebar, top or bottom of your blog posts encouraging those who enjoy your content to sign up (either via feed, or via email, both of which are popular options).
RSS Feeds with Feedburner

If you're using Wordpress, there's some easy plugins for this, too.
Once you've set things up, visit every few weeks and check on your subscribers - are they clicking on posts? If so, which ones? Learning what plays well for those who subscribe to your content can help make you a better blogger, and earn more visits from RSS, too.

#15 - Attend and Host Events

Despite the immense power of the web to connect us all regardless of geography, in-person meetings are still remarkably useful for bloggers seeking to grow their traffic and influence. The people you meet and connect with in real-world settings are far more likely to naturally lead to discussions about your blog and ways you can help each other. This yields guest posts, links, tweets, shares, blogroll inclusion and general business development like nothing else.
Lanyrd Suggested Events

I'm a big advocate of Lanyrd, an event directory service that connects with your social networks to see who among your contacts will be at which events in which geographies. This can be phenomenally useful for identifying which meetups, conferences or gatherings are worth attending (and who you can carpool with). The founder of Lanyrd also contributed this great answer on Quora about other search engines/directories for events (which makes me like them even more).

#16 - Use Your Email Connections (and Signature) to Promote Your Blog

Email Footer Link As a blogger, you're likely to be sending a lot of email out to others who use the web and have the power to help spread your work. Make sure you're not ignoring email as a channel, one-to-one though it may be. When given an opportunity in a conversation that's relevant, feel free to bring up your blog, a specific post or a topic you've written about. I find myself using blogging as a way to scalably answer questions - if I receive the same question many times, I'll try to make a blog post that answers it so I can simply link to that in the future.

I also like to use my email signature to promote the content I share online. If I was really sharp, I'd do link tracking using a service like Bit.ly so I could see how many clicks email footers really earn. I suspect it's not high, but it's also not 0.

#17 - Survey Your Readers

Web surveys are easy to run and often produce high engagement and great topics for conversation. If there's a subject or discussion that's particularly contested, or where you suspect showing the distribution of beliefs, usage or opinions can be revealing, check out a tool like SurveyMonkey (they have a small free version) or PollDaddy. Google Docs also offers a survey tool that's totally free, but not yet great in my view.

#18 - Add Value to a Popular Conversation

Numerous niches in the blogosphere have a few "big sites" where key issues arise, get discussed and spawn conversations on other blogs and sites. Getting into the fray can be a great way to present your point-of-view, earn attention from those interested in the discussion and potentially get links and traffic from the industry leaders as part of the process.
You can see me trying this out with Fred Wilson's AVC blog last year (an incredibly popular and well-respected blog in the VC world). Fred wrote a post about Marketing that I disagreed with strongly and publicly and a day later, he wrote a follow-up where he included a graphic I made AND a link to my post.
If you're seeking sources to find these "popular conversations," Alltop, Topsy, Techmeme (in the tech world) and their sister sites MediaGazer, Memeorandum and WeSmirch, as well as PopURLs can all be useful.

#19 - Aggregate the Best of Your Niche

Bloggers, publishers and site owners of every variety in the web world love and hate to be compared and ranked against one another. It incites endless intrigue, discussion, methodology arguments and competitive behavior - but, it's amazing for earning attention. When a blogger publishes a list of "the best X" or "the top X" in their field, most everyone who's ranked highly praises the list, shares it and links to it. Here's an example from the world of marketing itself:
AdAge Power 150

That's a screenshot of the AdAge Power 150, a list that's been maintained for years in the marketing world and receives an endless amount of discussion by those listed (and not listed). For example, why is SEOmoz's Twitter score only a "13" when we have so many more followers, interactions and retweets than many of those with higher scores? Who knows. But I know it's good for AdAge. :-)
Now, obviously, I would encourage anyone building something like this to be as transparent, accurate and authentic as possible. A high quality resource that lists a "best and brightest" in your niche - be they blogs, Twitter accounts, Facebook pages, individual posts, people, conferences or whatever else you can think to rank - is an excellent piece of content for earning traffic and becoming a known quantity in your field.
Oh, and once you do produce it - make sure to let those featured know they've been listed. Tweeting at them with a link is a good way to do this, but if you have email addresses, by all means, reach out. It can often be the start of a great relationship!

#20 - Connect Your Web Profiles and Content to Your Blog

Many of you likely have profiles on services like YouTube, Slideshare, Yahoo!, DeviantArt and dozens of other social and Web 1.0 sites. You might be uploading content to Flickr, to Facebook, to Picasa or even something more esoteric like Prezi. Whatever you're producing on the web and wherever you're doing it, tie it back to your blog.
Including your blog's link on your actual profile pages is among the most obvious, but it's also incredibly valuable. On any service where interaction takes place, those interested in who you are and what you have to share will follow those links, and if they lead back to your blog, they become opportunities for capturing a loyal visitor or earning a share (or both!). But don't just do this with profiles - do it with content, too! If you've created a video for YouTube, make your blog's URL appear at the start or end of the video. Include it in the description of the video and on the uploading profile's page. If you're sharing photos on any of the dozens of photo services, use a watermark or even just some text with your domain name so interested users can find you.
If you're having trouble finding and updating all those old profiles (or figuring out where you might want to create/share some new ones), KnowEm is a great tool for discovering your own profiles (by searching for your name or pseudonyms you've used) and claiming profiles on sites you may not yet have participated in.
I'd also strongly recommend leveraging Google's relatively new protocol for rel=author. AJ Kohn wrote a great post on how to set it up here, and Yoast has another good one on building it into Wordpress sites. The benefit for bloggers who do build large enough audiences to gain Google's trust is earning your profile photo next to all the content you author - a powerful markup advantage that likely drives extra clicks from the search results and creates great, memorable branding, too.

#21 - Uncover the Links of Your Fellow Bloggers (and Nab 'em!)

OpenSiteExplorer from Moz If other blogs in your niche have earned references from sites around the web, there's a decent chance that they'll link to you as well. Conducting competitive link research can also show you what content from your competition has performed well and the strategies they may be using to market their work. To uncover these links, you'll need to use some tools.
OpenSiteExplorer is my favorite, but I'm biased (it's made by Moz). However, it is free to use - if you create a registered account here, you can get unlimited use of the tool showing up to 1,000 links per page or site in perpetuity.
There are other good tools for link research as well, including Blekko, Majestic, Ahrefs and, I've heard that in the near-future, SearchMetrics.
Finding a link is great, but it's through the exhaustive research of looking through dozens or hundreds that you can identify patterns and strategies. You're also likely to find a lot of guest blogging opportunities and other chances for outreach. If you maintain a great persona and brand in your niche, your ability to earn these will rise dramatically.

Bonus #22 - Be Consistent and Don't Give Up

Why Bloggers Give Up Traffic Graph If there's one piece of advice I wish I could share with every blogger, it's this:

The above image comes from Everywhereist's analytics. Geraldine could have given up 18 months into her daily blogging. After all, she was putting in 3-5 hours each day writing content, taking photos, visiting sites, coming up with topics, trying to guest blog and grow her Twitter followers and never doing any SEO (don't ask, it's a running joke between us). And then, almost two years after her blog began, and more than 500 posts in, things finally got going. She got some nice guest blogging gigs, had some posts of hers go "hot" in the social sphere, earned mentions on some bigger sites, then got really big press from Time's Best Blogs of 2011.
I'd guess there's hundreds of new bloggers on the web each day who have all the opportunity Geraldine had, but after months (maybe only weeks) of slogging away, they give up.
When I started the SEOmoz blog in 2004, I had some advantages (mostly a good deal of marketing and SEO knowledge), but it was nearly 2 years before the blog could be called anything like a success. Earning traffic isn't rocket science, but it does take time, perseverance and consistency. Don't give up. Stick to your schedule. Remember that everyone has a few posts that suck, and it's only by writing and publishing those sucky posts that you get into the habit necessary to eventually transform your blog into something remarkable.
Good luck and good blogging from all of us at Moz!
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