How to Use WordPress For Your Small Business Blog? - Part 5

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I would like to start with a short recap of what we have discussed so far. If you read my post Five Reasons to Start a Small Business Blog before, you know that why it is necessary to start a small business blog already. Let me list down five reasons to start a small business blog once again:

1. Search engine optimization
2. A blog is an inexpensive form of public relations and marketing
3. A blog can be more effective than traditional methods of turning prospects into customers
4. Blogs can help you receive immediate feedback
5. Blogs are easier and less expensive to manage than full-fledged websites

Then we discussed where to start ? Which blogging platform to choose ? I suggested you to use WordPress and gave you some brief explanations about WordPress, Plugins, Monetization. You may find the previous for parts here:

How to Use WordPress For Your Small Business Blog? - Part 1
How to Use WordPress For Your Small Business Blog? - Part 2
How to Use WordPress For Your Small Business Blog? - Part 3
How to Use WordPress For Your Small Business Blog? - Part 4

Let’s start another interesting topic for WordPress blogs today:

Advertising Content on Your Blog

I know the main purpose of your blog is to boost exposure of your website, find targeted customers, and get feedback from them. Why not making some money from the traffic that is generated by your blog’s visitors ?

There are many different ways to do it. One of the most popular is using Google’s Adsense. If you are familiar with Google Adsense, you can read up on it here : http://www.google.com/services/adsense_tour/index.html

Monetizing with Google Adsense is an extremely controversial topic. It seems people either love it or hate it. Personally I love it. However i don’t rely solely on Google Adsense. I use Google Adsense when I can. If I can incorporate some Adsense ads into my pages without interfering with the readability of the page, then I will. Otherwise I don’t. However that is something that you will have to determine for yourself. There are some people out there who are making a killing with Adsense.

Affiliate Programs

Affiliate programs are another very popular way to earn an income online. There are many different websites that are basically a directory of affiliate programs. They have already done all the hard work for you by bringing together thousands of different companies showcasing hundreds of thousands of products for you to promote. They handle all the billing, commissions, ad creation and updating. All you need to do is sign up for free, apply for the products you wish to promote and start posting the ready made ads to your website.

The one solid piece of advise I can give you if your considering this route is this. Niche markets. Don’t try to build the next Shopping.com. It likely won’t happen. Spend the time required to investigate some niche markets. Do your keyword research. How many times per month are real people searching for this product or service. Take what you think are good possible keywords and do some searches on Google to see how many people are into it and who they are. Check their websites and see what they’re selling similar items for. Check with the affiliate programs and see what kind of pricing they have and how much commission they’ll pay you.

In the next part i will provide you a list of affiliate programs where you can easily sign-up and make some money with your blog. However the success of these programs are dependent to your blog’s traffic. If you have 1-2 visitors per day to your blog, then you should not expect a miracle from them.

No need to worry if you don’t have enough visitors to your blog or website today. We will further discuss ways to increase traffic to your blog and free ways to do marketing of it. Until next episode, please stay tuned, and add my blog to your RSS subscriptions to join the search for blogging.

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