Building backlinks for free

Incoming links are a vital mechanical component for a successful blog. Backlinks give your blog a greater presence on search engines by giving you a higher page rank. With this in mind, these higher rankings give you a greater authority on the web by attracting more loyal readers and advertisers. With more traffic and authority on the web, the more money is attracted from advertisers.

This is why it is important to build your backlinks and more efficiently. Getting your blog address everywhere is key to making more money for yourself.

Following these steps below can set you off on the right track to bringing yourself more mainstream income from your blog.

Write content that interests your readers

The greatest way to gain more people to link to your site is by writing great content. All over this blog I say nothing but how important it is to create great content. Naturally if you write posts that engage readers and make them interested in what you have to say, people will want to talk about your posts and share them on with their friends. That means more links to your blog. Creating great content & fast is a route to a successful path to creating more and more backlinks quick to boost your income.

Submitting to blog directories

Although I have not had that much success from blog directories I have decided to put it in this post anyways. Blog directories can increase the number of links to your blog just by putting posting your link. In my opinion these are a dying process and would recommend you spend little time pursuing them. That's not to say you will have success even though I haven't.

Reach out and guest post

Contacting owners of blogs that are equally or more authority than yours and writing a post for them can dramatically increase your blog traffic. Guest posting is a great way to promote your blog and even earn some loyal readers along the way. This can improve your ad impressions and the chance of PPC (Pay-Per-Click) conversions.

Try reading: How to successfully get your guest post published - A guide to building relationships.

Create other blogs or websites

If you have the time to create another blog, build a bigger online presence with another blog. You could link your blogs back and forth to increase your links. Creating lenses through Squidoo can also make a massive impact and you can even earn royalties if your content is great enough.



There are many ways to increase your backlinks. I believe these to be the best way of improving your content. Keeping up with the latest trends can help you achieve greater things with your blog.

Read More

Calculating how much your blog is worth

Many people who have been working hard on their blogs have the curiosity of how much their blog is worth. How do we calculate how much our blogs are truly worth. This is incredibly important if you are considering to sell your blog. Their are people out there that create blogs, build a reputation, a loyal following and then sell them. Their can be great money involved if you can build a blog correct.

Other people create a blog and for one reason or another are unable to maintain them and carry on writing them anymore. Instead of just leaving them on the side of the road, they give the keys to another person who is willing to continue by selling the blog in an attempt to get some money back for the hard work they have done.

After a vast amount of research about this subject I am going to show you what I have learnt and how you can calculate the worth of your blog.

Step 1 - Determining an overall value

There are a number of websites out there like BlogCalculator.com and URLAppraisal.net that are a great place to start to determine an estimate value. One thing you have to remember is that none of them are accurate and comparing your blog on a number of websites, it is unlikely you will get the same value. It would be wise to use these evaluations as a guideline only.

Step 2 - Calculating the data

Now is the time to dig up all your statistics and calculate your achievements over the last year or so. You need to take a more in-depth look into the data that will interested potential buyers.

You need to take into account your:

• Monthly page views,
• Monthly unique visitors (Google Analytics is great for calculating these)
• Show your traffic growth for example in a graph
• Show statistics on the age of your blog and the amount of posts in your archives
• Calculate your social media presence. The amount of Twitter followers and Facebook likes
• Number of quality backlinks
• Monthly income of your blog
• Sources of incoming traffic

These things need to be taken into consideration for potential buyers. Your going to need to be able to show these if you are going to be successful in selling. People are not going to buy your blog off you without any information.

Step 3 - Calculating a general worth of your blog

All of the information in Step 2 is critical for a successful transaction. Now you need to come up with a starting amount on how much to sell your blog for. A simple rule that I have learned is to calculate what you earn in a month from your blog and times it by 12. To break this down you need to work out roughly how much your blog makes a year. That is the general rule of gaining your price.

Step 4 - Increasing your blogs worth

After calculating your blogs worth and your not happy with it, there are a few things you can do to try and match your evaluation. Make sure you have a domain name that is easily transferred, and make sure your blogs design stands out from the crowd.

Spend some time creating some quality backlinks to your blog. Make sure you recognise how important it is to create backlinks and the wonders that they can do. Get in touch with other blogs in your niche that you know generate a lot of traffic. Try and find quality backlinks instead of paying for poor backlinks or using programmes that promise you loads of backlinks in a short time. Search engines like Google could consider these to be spam and have you removed from their index completely.

 

Read More

Improving your writing for your readers

Almost everybody would like more readers to their blogs, more of a loyal following and a community. Your writing style can be a direct influence on how people perceive your blog. If your writing is not up to a minimal scratch that people can tolerate, your reader is going to lose interest.

Having great charisma on paper can encourage more readers to view your posts. That doesn't mean to say your writing has to be top notch without a single mistake, we are all human and people don't mind the occasional mistake as they know its a personal thing.

Although in this post today I am going to give you a little help and tell you what I think has helped me improve my writing recently. Take these points into consideration the next time you sit down to write your blog posts, who knows what you could achieve.

Write for your audience not for yourself

Its crucial to cater for your whole audience, try not to be to technical in your writing. If you choose to write technical, try and simplify it as much as you can.

If your blog post can't be entertaining, useful or educating to your audience, try and find something they find significance in. If you struggle to find the happy medium, your readers are certainly not going to stick around for long.

Make sure you know what your writing about

Your blog headline should be your main focus, try not to rabble on about something that has nothing to do with what your supposed to be writing about. This is vital as your reader can become bored and uninterested.  They have clicked on your post to read about a specific subject save everything else for another one.

Break down into simpler and smaller posts


Create a series of posts if you have to, people like to read small and informative pieces, they tend to stay focused. Instead of taking the occasional scroll down the page to see how long we all write for and think "Nah its too long".

Failing that try and break down your posts into more paragraphs and space out your work, its easier on the eyes and your readers wont be too lazy to finish the rest of your post.


Take these into consideration the next time you write and see how you get on. You may see a significant increase in your traffic to your posts in a short while. The great thing about blogging is that it is trial and error. That's the fun of it and trying to work out what fits your style best. Let me know how you get on, or whether or not you found this post helpful in the comments below.

Read More

Why I think your blog should have Twitter

As one of the biggest micro-blogging services on the world wide web today. It is so beneficial to a blogger. Even if you hate using social networking services, we all need to use them to broadcast our blogs. They can be such a valuable way of bringing traffic to you.

Below I am going to show you some reasons on why I think your blog can benefit from using Twitter.

Twitter is great for building relationships

Twitter allows you to follow and be followed at your own choice. Building relationships is an important thing in having a successful blog. By following and choosing who you follow you can choose people in your area of expertise to succeed in driving more traffic to your blog.

Be known as an expert

If your following the relevant people in your area, on occasion you may find people asking questions. Answering these questions can establish you in the community as a know it all. People are more likely to follow you and visit your blog posts if they trust what you have to say.

Don't be afraid to ask questions

Return the favour. if your anything like me, you plan in advance and wrote your ideas down when ever you get them. When it comes to writing, you may encounter something you want to explain but don't quite know what your talking about. Ask the question! Twitter is great for getting some feedback and answers. Start talking to your followers, you want to be on the tongues of everyone you encounter in your professional career.

Broadcast your services and share beneficial information

Looking for someone to guest post. looking for an interview? Tweet it, you never know who is going to be interested. Have a shout out and reap the rewards.


These are a few things that I think why your blog should use twitter. Make sure to create an account that is just associated with your blog. Create a professional presence and interact with fellow intellects.

Read More

4 Reasons why you will not blog

In the last post I gave you 4 Great reasons why you blog. Now in this post I am going to give you 4 reasons why you may not want to blog. The truth is that the reality may not even live up to your expectations of blogging. You may have heard of some great success stories while you were thinking about blogging, this rarely happens. Putting it straight like that can bring you back to reality.

I think its important to understand why you should blog and why blogging may not be for you. In this post today I am going to outline some of the "realities" of blogging and leave it up to you to make up your own mind about it.

Bloggers often think they are going to earn a lot of money

In some cases yes! Bloggers do make a six figure income, not many, but some. Bloggers tend to make a few hundred a month and more earn next to nothing. Its very unlikely your expectations will be met. You have to be consistent and be unique in your area to become successful. Try and be a resource for your readers.


Blogs take a lot of work

If you want to be a famous blogger, you have to work at it a lot. If you want to be the number one blog in your area you have to really pay attention and keep up with the latest trends in your market. Another thing that needs a lot of work is your patience! Bloggers seem to think that they can put up a few posts and then watch the moment pour in! I can assure you that does not happen. Far from it.

Successful bloggers take the time to research their next posts and spend a lot of time building relationships with people of influence. Successful bloggers are always taking the time to learn new things and try different tactics to ensure what is the best way to maximise their blogs.

You must have a thick skin

As you progress in daily life as a blogger, you are going to come across readers that just hate your content. Nothing you can do, your not going to please everyone. If your going to let readers knock you off your horse and not get back on, then the blogging life is certainly not for you.

People like to be more aggressive and horrible behind a computer screen and tend to say the worst things. You must not take this personally if you are to succeed.

Your visitor count is not going to sky rocket in a day

Unless you already have a massive social media backing already, realisticly your not going to see your first ten thousand visitors in your first six months. Blogging takes time and the wise words "those who wait will be rewarded" come into play here. You need to be ready to promote your blog anywhere and everywhere you can. Tell your friends and family. Spread the word out anyway you can to gain some publicity to gain that amazing work from home lifestyle your dreaming of.

Trying to be a little more controversial here and give you the good and bad of both worlds, maybe this will open your mind into better reasons you may want to blog. Its a long and lonely world out there for a blogger.

Read More

4 Great reasons why you blog

There could be a number of reasons why people blog, most bloggers are easily motivated, reside in these few categories that I am about to mention. Before you create your blog, take some time to consider the reason why you want to be a blogger. I suggest only start a blog if you aim to go far. Your blog is not going to go far if you are write one post and leave it for six months, unless you want it that way who knows?!

Blogging for fun

There are many blogs out there that keep up to date with celebrity gossip, sports news and music news. People like to look at these categories because they are fun and entertaining. Personal blogs also come into this category, as you wouldn't be blogging if you didn't enjoy it.

Blogging for exposure

Some people start a blog so they can expand their communications with professional siblings, many others use them for network expansion. Meeting people you wouldn't think of meeting can come from your blog. Blogging gives an individual or company the opportunity to expand their grasp and reach broader audiences which can lead to other opportunities.

Blogging for business

Some businesses have started creating blogs to create a bigger online presence. Blogging can have a major effect on your websites search engine rank and boost you to the top. Blogging can promote sales and increase your reputation as a king in your area. Business blogging can record your success and keep people up to date with the new services, it can also expand brand awareness.

Blogging for education

Blogs can be created for teaching readers about certain things and on a specific topic. For example a blog can be built to teach people how to blog like this one! It doesn't matter what your blogging about as long as the purpose of the blog is to educate a reader.

 Whatever your preference to blogging is or your interested in blogging, I hope these have given you a help on choosing why you should blog or already blog for. Have any questions? Leave a comment in the box below.

Read More

Increasing your blog traffic through Facebook

Facebook is more and more becoming the biggest brand on the planet! It boasts a staggering 1/7th of the world population who use the social networking platform. Not only is it a social tool to keep in touch with your friends and family, its an ultimate tool for your brand and blog. Facebook is also a great tool for you to increase your traffic. Below in this post I will explain some of the things that help me improve my own traffic using this great social programme.


Complete your Facebook page

Consider what you want your Facebook page to represent. If you want to use Facebook as a way of establishing yourself as a professional in your area, you need to complete your profile and fill in all your vital information. You may want to be careful of the pictures you are uploading, you don't want rude or offensive pictures to appear when your readers are browsing through there news feed.

To use Facebook to drive traffic to your blog, you will need to add many friends in your area of expertise and its quite likely you wouldn't want these people to see your drunken photos of last Friday night! Use the search tool to find people on Facebook, you can search by name, company and many, many more. You don't need to know any of them, what is the worst thing that can happen? They just ignore your request. Find another. On the other hand, the best thing could happen is that they can become a loyal following to you and even become a customer.

Link all your social accounts to your Facebook page

I link all of my social networking accounts together. For example; When I post on my LinkedIn account, it automatically posts on Twitter which then automatically posts onto my Facebook account in the matter of a second! There is no fussing around with logging into each account to post the same status update. In a matter of a second, my updates reach potentially over 10,000 people.

Promote your Facebook page

Add your Facebook page link to your blog, email signature, forum signatures and even business cards. Anything you can think of that can promote it. You want to give everyone the opportunity to find you.

Make sure you stay active within your Facebook page and give your readers a reason to follow you. Who knows how your growth can be if people like your status' or even shares them.

Be active and remember to be human

Don't create your Facebook page if your going to forget about it and expect people to just stumble and like it. Believe me it does not happen! In order for you to succeed you need to be active an be part of the community you are in. You need to update your status, share your content and engage with your fans. By building relations with your loyal fans, you can certainly grow into a better page.

Last but certainly not the least, be a human! Unlike other social networking sites that require you to be the professional, get a little personal with your readers. Mix up and shake up your content by not only promoting your content but add a little something for entertainment. Add some funny humour within your niche. These can go along way with succeeding with Facebook.

Read More