.#asw10
The 1:30 session is about to start, Monetizing Blogs for Affiliate Marketing and SEO. The panel is:
The panel is unanimous in their support for Wordpress as a blogging platform. It’s the best SEO-optimized platform out of the box. Each of the panelists is giving us an overview on blogging advice and how they got to where they are now. So far, nobody has mentioned monetizing their blogs, which is going to come a bit later.
Some key points:
- Guest posts are great. Contact sites in your niche and write for them. Build brand awareness.
- Stay on topic - keyword dilution is a major problem. Lean and mean wins the day.
- If you put a ratty leather jacket on him, Murray Newlands could make a passable Billy Idol impersonator. Hey, I didn’t say that all my blogging would be serious.
- Setting the permalink structure is important in Wordpress. Keyword-rich URLs are immensely helpful. John does not think that category pages or tag pages in Wordpress create duplicate content issues - as long as you use snippets and not the whole posts on those pages.
- The panel suggests the following plugins for Wordpress:
- All in One
- WordPress.com stats
- WP Super Cache
- WP-DB-Backup
- Akismet
- WP Contact Form III
- Email Responder
- Disqus
- TanTan Noodles
- CommentLuv
- TweetThis
- Tweetmeme
- Add Post Footer
- Odiogo Listen Button
- Google XML Site Maps
- Broken Link Checker
- Each of the panelist’s blogs will have links for all those plugins. (*whew* - because as much as I love you, I ain’t looking up all the URLs!)
- Drew uses Izea. Here’s a few other places to start with monetizing:
- Affiliate Networks (Pepperjam, Commission Junction, ShareASale and others)
- Google AdSense
- InText Solutions (SkimLinks/VigLinks/Kontera)
- Chitika ShoppingAds
- Paid links… ugh. Really? Paid links, guys?
- Pay Per Posts… another ugh. It’s on the list, though.
- CPA Networks (Azoogle, Affiliate.com, Clickbooth and others)
- CPM Banner/Ad Networks (AdBrite, ValueClick Media, CasaleMedia)
- Tim says that not every solution will work with every niche. You need to experiment and find the ones that work for you. Treat your blog like a business if you want to make money at a level higher than “hobby”.
- Drew highly recommends creating your own product like an online course (or eBook)
This was quite a good session with a very knowledgeable panel. Thanks, guys!
