We’ve all heard a LOT of different things about keywords, but what we may not have heard about recently is the idea of the long tail keyword, or a chain of words, even a chain of keywords, that form their own keyword.

For instance, “blog” and “money” might be keywords, but a long tail keyword would take these two keywords and make a new keyword out of them like “make money blogging” or “money making blog”.  Even “money blog” might be a possibility.

Using long tail keywords essentially allows you to do two things.  One, it gives you more keywords per post.  “Make money blogging”, for example, not only has itself as a keyword but also “make”, “make money”, “blog”, and “blogging”.  Two, it allows you to target your posts more specifically.  People who search for “make money” will find everything from jobs to lottery tickets, but people who want to “make money blogging” are more likely to find YOU.

So for more traffic, and more targeted traffic, consider the long tail.

Having a sponsor for your blog or an in kind sponsor that will help you get to events etc. is a great thing for a blogger. Lets face it, most of us are not generating 100’s of thousands of dollars in revenue (not yet at least). So getting to attend conference to learn more and do some great networking, or getting enough revenue to just keep the site running is a great thing.

There are three ways to make sure that your request for sponsorship is ignored:

1. Don’t do any research - If you just find an email address for someone at the company or organization that you would like to sponsor you and then fire off an email without any research about the company, about its previous sponsorships etc. You are guaranteed to have your email deleted.

2. Don’t have a proper pitch prepared - Just fill your email with a few lines of begging, tell them why your blog is so great and what an opportunity they are missing if they don’t sponsor you. Yes this email will land in the trash can.

3. Don’t tell the sponsor what’s in it for them. Just focus on your needs, what you will get out of the sponsorship and how happy that will make you. This will definitely get deleted.

So there you have it, how not to get sponsorship. What ways have you thought of to attract sponsors to your site?

To have ads or not is a long standing debate amongst bloggers. Some feel that it is too much of an imposition on their readers, others say they don’t need the money or the hassle of setting it up. Still others say it is a natural part of blogging, we have ads everywhere else why not on a blog.

Here are three reasons why not having ads on your site might hurt your blog:

1. There is a growing expectation that blogs that are serious carry ads, especially targetted, sponsor based ads. Its a sign of credibility that if the blog can attract real advertisers then it must have significant traffic and therefore it must have content worth reading.

2. If you have paying advertisers it sets a level of expectation on you for the frequency of posts. If they are paying they will want to see a reasonable number of posts and increasing traffic to your blog. That means you are less likely to skip a post opportunity because you need to keep your advertisers happy.

3. Who doesn’t need the extra cash? Really, anyone who gives that as an excuse is missing the point, sure you personally might not need the cash but your blog probably can use it. The extra cash can give you the ability to add some really nice features to your blog that will help you drive increasing traffic. Invest in your blog business at every opportunity.

What are your thoughts on Ads?

One question that professional bloggers often get asked is - “Whats the best way to earn a lot of money blogging?”. I suppose thats a fairly natural question, especially if someone is considering a move into blogging as a career change, after all they want to pay their bills, put food on the table etc.

My answer to that though might disappoint. My answers is - “I have no idea”. Doesn’t sound like much in the way of advice does it, but here is why its the best advice I can give you as an aspiring blogger. If you are focused solely on the bottom line, if your blog is all about the money, you will find that you have no real relationship with your potential “customers”.

Instead of trying to figure out how to pull the very last dollar from the experience, think about how you can add even more value to the experience. Take a look at what you are giving your readers now, what you think they are getting from reading your blog then find a way to add more to it. They will tell people about you and that will increase your readership. Will it make you rich quick? I doubt it, but will it bring you other rewards I have no doubt about it.

What could you do to add more value to your readers?

When people say they want to make money blogging, they often mean that they want to be able to sit at home, in front of the computer, share a few thoughts with the world and then sit back and watch the dollars roll in.

Blogging is work, actually blogging is hard work.  It takes all the skills of any other entrepreneurial venture.  You have to get to know your customers, you have to know your market and you have to know how to communicate.

The sites with high traffic and therefore high revenue potential all have one thing in common - Focus.  The authors, whether a sole blogger or a team have a singular vision of what the content should be and how their blog should be represented.

If you want a revenue generating blog, then the first thing you need is Focus. Establish what it is you want to say, find out who is going to listen and communicate with them. Establish a routine early, and keep to it. Keep reviewing what you are writing and who is reading it.  Keep ensuring that the Focus is kept, revisited, and refreshed as needed but keep it.

The holiday season is finally upon us. Many people are already getting ready to spend money Black Friday this November 28th and Cyber Monday on December 1st. It seems that everyone’s mindset right now is spend, spend, spend.

But the question you should be asking yourself is…

Am I Taking Advantage Of This Holiday Season?

First of all, you do know that you can bank in a lot of money this holiday season by promoting different types of products… right? If you do, then you’re already ahead of the game and know what you’re doing. If not, then listen.

This holiday season (and every holiday season) is the perfect time to promote all sorts of products. Generally, when you promote these products, you get a commission for each sale. Now think about it… this is the perfect time to promote products now that people actually WANT to buy stuff!

I don’t really want to tell you what you should do since there are an unlimited number of ways to make money this holiday season. Trust me, there are plenty of ways you can promote products and make money from them. If you are really stuck, here are some ideas:

• Start a “holiday deals” blog.
• Create a new niche site on a specific product.
• Use PPC marketing.
• Place banner ads on your blog/site on different types of products.
• Buy banner ads on other blogs/sites on different types of products.
• Sell stuff on eBay.

That small list should be enough for you. The clock is ticking… get started right now!

By the way, check out Joe’s video about this topic over at IMwithJoe. If I can’t convince you to do something, I sure hope Joe will.

Here’s a quick reality check. If you want to make money online, the best way to start is by NOT starting a “make money online” blog!

A lot of people make the big mistake of starting a blog about “making money online” thinking that in the process they will make some easy money. 

If I start a “make money online” blog, then I can easily make money from the blog! I just need to insert affiliate links everywhere, insert AdSense ads everywhere, sell text links, sell banners, write paid reviews, and all that good stuff I can do with it… right?

Wrong! First of all, yes it is possible to make some money from a MMO blog, but the reality is, there’s just so many out there that readers don’t have time to keep up with new ones. Also, here’s something you need to know when starting a blog about MMO (which I read somewhere but don’t remember where):

Over 75% Of All Your Readers Will Be Bloggers That Have Their Own Blog!

That’s 3 out of 4 people. What this means is that it will be harder for you to get clicks to your AdSense ads or your affiliate text links! Just think about it. When you visit a MMO blog that has AdSense ads, do you actually “fall” for them and click on the ads? I didn’t think so. You know about these things, and therefore, you try to stay away from them because you know exactly what they are for. But now let’s say you have a blog about “cooking” and is monetized by AdSense alone. You can plug in all the AdSense ads you want everywhere, and guess what? You will have a better chance of getting clicks to those ads than with a blog about MMO!

This “making money online” niche is too saturated, and the big boys are having all the fun. But if you still want to start one (or already have a blog about MMO), you will need to do some 500% more work than the big boys. Below are 3 tips and guidelines that will help you get to the top.

Make Sure Your Blog Doesn’t Suck

This is the most important thing when it comes to starting a new blog, whatever niche it might be in. But because you want to start a new MMO blog, you will need to make sure your blog is unique and doesn’t suck. Readers don’t like blogs that suck, you know.

Recommended Reading:
Your Blog Sucks and I Got 20 Reasons To Back It Up

Want To Be a Popular Blogger RIGHT NOW?

If you want to take a short cut, I just want to let you know that it’s possible. It’s not recommended for new blogs because you will need to build up some credentials and trust first. But as soon as you have your momentum started and have at least 50 RSS/Email subscribers, you can do this simple trick to get instant popularity.

Recommended Reading: 
Warning: This Simple Trick Can Make You A Famous Blogger In No Time

Get Instant Traffic

Traffic is key. If you don’t want to take the shortcut as I talked about above, try applying some (or all) of these ways to explode your traffic. They all work and will bring in traffic instantly.

Recommended Reading:
30 Tips For Exploding Your Site Traffic

There’s a lot of bloggers and other people out there that claim that they make money online. Yes, most of the times this is true, but there are who just say things like this to scam people. But the topic of what I’m going to talk about is not about who really makes money and who doesn’t. What this is about, though, is why people fail to make money online because of 3 simple reasons.

Reason #1 - People Do Not Take Action

Let me ask you a question. Why do you come to this blog? It’s because you like the content, right? And because of the content (the pillar content in particular), you plan to apply them right? So when I wrote 30 tip on how to explode your traffic, did you even take the time to apply the ones you have never done before? Or did you just pass up the opportunity to explode your traffic? If this is you, then you know exactly what I mean by not taking action. There are a lot of people out there that want to make money online, read all they can about the topic, and even pay hundreds of dollars to get all the resources and information they need to get started. But what happens? They never apply the information they learned; and if they did, they give it up after a few days knowing that it would take a lot of work to do. Let’s take a look at reality people. Even the top online money-makers out there had to put a lot of work to get themselves in the position they are in now. You can’t succeed without taking action.

Reason #2 - People Don’t Treat Their Online Business As a Real Business

Blogs are a good example. Most people don’t treat their blogs as a business. What do I mean by this? Well, imagine you own a book store in your neighborhood. What will you need to run the business? To name a few, you will need some capital (money), a place to run the book store, a business license, lots of books, shelves for the books, cash registers, and all the other good stuff needed to run a book store. As you can see, it would be impossible to run a successful book store without these things. So how is this related to blogging? Well, to start a (successful and long term) blog, you will need a domain name, web hosting, a brand, a decent looking blog design, some plugins to help run the blog, etc. Again, this all takes a lot of work and money.  

But let’s take things a bit further, so let’s go back to the book store. Say your store has become successful in just a matter of weeks. More people know about it through word-of-mouth and your sales just keep increasing. You then have two things you can do: keep the store the way it is, or upgrade (bigger space, more books and shelves, etc.). Most people would upgrade, right? It’s the same thing with your own website or blog. If you have gained some success and money through it, why not upgrade? Why not purchase a few plugins like OIOpublisher, for example, to help you with ad management? Or if you feel it’s time to upgrade your site’s design, why not spend a few dollars to get a premium theme? My point is, you need to treat your online business as if it’s a real business in the real world. Don’t be cheap. There are some who say that you don’t need to spend money to make money. This is true, but if you plan to succeed and make MORE money, you need to start scaling up.

Reason #3 - People Don’t Learn From Their Mistakes

I’m sure you’ve tried to do something and failed. Then this question comes up:

What Did I Do Wrong?

The thing you need to know is, it’s not about what that you did wrong. It’s about learning and applying the things you need to do so that you won’t fail again.

Have you ever tried flipping domains? What about flipping websites? Or affiliate marketing? Let me tell you that these three ways of making money online are not impossible, and you can even make a living from doing them (yes, it’s realistically possible and people do make a living doing these). The thing is, most people have tried them, failed a few times, then gave up. WHY?!?! If you know there is a lot of money to be made, why would you give up?

Instead of giving up, the best thing to do is learn from your mistakes. If you tried flipping celebrity-related domains, why not try flipping movie-related domains? If you tried promoting affiliate products through websites and blog posts, why not try using PPC marketing? What I’m trying to point out is simple. If you know something works, keep trying. Find a way to fix your mistake and never ever give up. Ever.

Do You Have A Success Story?

If you are someone who is now successful at doing what you do online, please tell us your success story. How did your failures motivate it? What steps did you take to get back on track? We’d love to read about your success story, so go ahead and post it below!