Increasing Traffic to Your Blog

Forum Signature Files

One way to increase traffic to your blog is to post messages on
internet forums. An internet forum is simply a message board where
people gather to talk and form their own online communities. There
are forums on just about any topic you can think of. Seriously, you
would be surprised what topics you can find forums on! You can find
forums on anything from childbirth to finance, from politics to world
history, and literally every other topic in between.


Most online forums allow you to have a personalized signature file.
Within this personal signature file you can generally put a link to your
blog, a link to a website you own or frequent, your name, the city you
live in, or any other basic information you choose to have visible to
anyone who reads the forum messages. When you post a message on
the forum, your signature file will automatically post the information
you entered into it, at the bottom of each of the messages you post.
Using a signature on forums can be a great way to get people to come
and read your blog while being able to reach your target market
easily.


What you will want to do first is to sign-up for forums which either
relate directly to your topic, or where people with similar interests to
your topic hang-out online, and then include the link back to your blog
in your signature file. You want to make sure to only post good quality
and more important relevant messages to the topic of the forum. You
should aim to become a valuable participant in the forum. If your
messages add value to the forum for the other community readers,
and you get to know some of the other posters and build an online
friendship, then they will likely check-out your blog and start reading
it. When they find that they like your blog they will also post
messages on their favorite forums about it and bring you more
readers. They will begin to advertise your blog for you. What’s better
than some passive advertising? Nothing!


What you do not want to ever do is join a forum and simply post about
how great your blog is and how everyone should check it out. This is
considered spamming and will result in you being banned from most
forums, and might even get your blog itself shut-down. You will not
gain any meaningful traffic from doing this. All you will do is irritate
people and possibly get some nice rude comments added to your blog.
People will not check out your blog because you say it is great.

Need More Help With AdSense?

One of the best things about Google is that they assume everyone
needs some clear helpful explanations and easy to navigate help
pages. They have done an excellent job of creating their “Help” pages
with regard to AdSense. Reading the help screens in AdSense can
help you to get the most out of the program with your blog. It is well
worth taking some time to familiarize yourself with these pages and
the information contained within them.

Posting a Message

If you click on the Posting tab you will be brought to the screen where
you will be able to post messages, edit messages and moderate
comments on your blog. If you wish to make a post on your blog
simply click on the “Posting” tab and you will be taken to the “Create
Post” screen below:



























To post a message on your new blog, simply type a title and the text
of your post, just like you would if you were sending someone an e-
mail message.


When you are finished with your post, you can either click on the blue
“Save as Draft” button or “Publish” your post to your blog for everyone
who visits your blog to see. If you make an error in your post, even
after you have published it, simply go to “Edit Posts” here on this
screen. Here you can make your changes and re-publish your blog.


Blogger gives you the option of moderating comments on your blog as
well. This means that you can restrict who can comment on your blog.
You can allow comments to be added to your blog by anonymous
visitors or only those registered with Blogger. You can also turn on
word verification to insure a comment on your blog was typed in by a
visitor to your specific blog. You also have the option of manually
approving any comments on your blog before they are posted for the
whole world to see. This can be helpful if you have someone
spamming your blog with their comments or posting something
offensive in the comments section of your blog.

Blogger Set-Up, Step 1 – Create an Account

To create your own free blog on Blogger, you will need to complete
just three easy steps. The first is to create a Blogger/Google account.
To create your Blogger account simply fill in the requested information
with an existing e-mail address, a password of your choice, a display
name of your choice, enter the word verification, and check the box
showing that you understand and accept the Blogger “Terms of
Service” legal information. (Yes, you should read the Terms of
Service!)

The word verification on Blogger is simply to insure that actual people
are signing up for Blogger web space and not having software do it for
them. Word verification just simply a security feature that Google
uses on Blogger to try and keep its website safe from spam and other
inappropriate usages.


Once you have entered all of the requested information on the “Create
an Account” screen, click on the orange “Continue” button. This will
take you to the second step in creating your blog; the “Name Your
Blog” screen.

Rules of AdSense

When you sign up for Google’s AdSense, you will be asked to agree to
their “Terms of Service” agreement. This is one agreement which you
should read and make sure you fully understand everything on it.


Google has very specific rules as to what you can and cannot do with
their AdSense ads. And Google is very serious about their rules. For
instance you are prohibited from asking your readers to click on the
AdSense links. You are totally prohibited from clicking on the links on
your own sites. You are also prohibited from putting Google AdSense
links in pop-ups, pop-unders, or websites with any type of
pornographic material. You are only permitted three AdSense boxes
per website page. By understanding the terms of the AdSense
agreement it will go a long way towards helping you to stay both
ethical and profitable with their program. Ignoring their terms of
service will only cause you problems and likely get you kicked off of
the program forever.


Google tracks websites which are created with a bunch of junk content
specifically to get AdSense clicks. Google does not like splogs and
goes after them with a vengeance even encouraging other bloggers to
report them when they find them online. These sites generally copy
content from other websites or free content sites, and then post it on
their site solely for AdSense revenue. This is against Google’s policy
and they will pull their ads from these sites when they find them. As
an ethical blogger this is actually a good thing for you and your
success because it can keep the splogs from getting higher search
rankings than your real and valid blog which you put your time into
creating and keeping up to date.

Using AdSense for Monetization

Many websites and blogs use AdSense to monetize their sites.
AdSense is good for monetization because it tailors the ads to your site
content. AdSense also allows you to sell space on your site by setting
it up once and then not having think much about it ever again, other
than tweaking a bit the location and side of the AdSense ad blocks
themselves on your site. Passive income is always the best form of
income to have because it frees you up to be working on other things
and sits there in the background making you money.


If you spend a bit of time placing the AdSense ad boxes on your site
when you build it, and then keep your titles and content inline with the
topic of your blog, you can make money with AdSense without much
further thought. AdSense is a great source of passive income. Passive
income is very important and valuable. Passive income is money
which you receive without having to do daily work for it. It is simply
something you set-up once and then sit back and collect your money
from it over time.


One way to publish a successful monetized blog is to find a blog topic
which is fairly unique. Find a unique topic means you do not have a
lot of websites to compete with in the search engines. By doing this
you can generate a lot of natural visitors through search engine
listings and then from those visitors a lot of clicks on your AdSense
ads as well.


There are entire books written on how to find “the” topic to publish the
best monetized blog. However, the easiest way is to simply search for
topics that interest you and see how many page hits sites like Google
return; the lower the number, the better the topic. Understand
however, that everything you search will have a ton of hits. Any
search with results lower than about a two million is probably a great
option for a blog topic. Any search over about ten million is probably
not the best topic to choose.


Trying to get good search engine rankings with a topic like chickens is
much easier than trying to get a high ranking with a topic like
computers. With a topic of computers there are literally millions of
websites; some are very large sites, dedicated to the topic. All of
whom you will have to compete with for rankings! Why try and
compete with IBM and Dell when you can simply find something easier
to blog on? It just doesn’t make sense to try. Stick to the lesser
keywords and you will see better traffic and AdSense income.

AdSense as a Monetization Model

AdSense is Google’s program which allows you to sell space on your
website to host other people’s advertisements. Hosting AdSense ads
on your website or blog is completely 100% free to you as the host
and a great way to earn some money.


How do you earn money with Google’s AdSense? Simple, every time
someone clicks on an AdSense ad on your blog Google pays you.
Someone clicking on your ad is called “click through.” Your visitor is
clicking through your webpage to another webpage via the AdSense
link on your website. Google pays you for these click through visitors
because their advertising has successfully reached a visitor on your
blog. You get paid because you agreed to host the ads and you
provided good content which got a targeted ad and a resulting click on
that ad.

AdSense is a very popular way to monetize a blog because it is simple
to set-up and use, especially on a blog which is hosted by Blogger.
Why? The answer to that is simple; Google owns both Blogger and
AdSense so the two have been programmed to work very well
together. Google wants you to host their AdSense ads on your blog so
they have made it very easy for you to ad the ad blocks, and has
made it simple to make them look great and blend in with the theme
of your blog as well. They understand this makes for a higher click
through ratio and want to help work with you to earn as much revenue
for both of you as possible.


AdSense is also very popular because it makes you money without you
having to go out and find your own advertisers for your site. Imagine
all of the work you would have to go through to find other businesses
to advertise their products that would interest your specific visitors on
your website. Rather than you having to go out and find other
companies to advertise on your website Google brings them there for
you to advertise on your site. This saves you loads of time and has
the potential to make you loads of cash in the process. It also brings
your blog some seriously high quality advertisers. Most all of the
biggest companies in the world advertise through Google!


AdSense is intuitive, meaning that it reads your website or blog and
then chooses ads which are relevant to the content it has found. This
means that if you have a blog on cats, then AdSense will not put ads
about working at home on your blog. The AdSense ads are great
because they will be relevant to your topic and content which means
you have a better chance of your readers clicking on them.


How AdSense works is that if, for example, you have a blog about
dogs, AdSense will place ads for things like pet supplies, dog training
and other relevant goods and services likely to get the visitors of your
blog to click on them. You will not see ads on a dog themed website
for irrelevant things like weight loss products or make tons of money
at home stuffing envelopes schemes. The ads will fit the topics you
are writing about.


What additionally makes AdSense ads great is that they can be made
to blend in with the theme and look of your website or blog. This
makes them less “ad” looking and they genuinely look like a totally
natural part of your blog. While visitors to your website or blog don’t
want to see blatant advertisements, they see the AdSense ads more
as a part of your content or other links. This is good for two reasons.
Number one, you do not want to appear to be trying to make money
from your readers of your blog. Number two, your blog does not end
up cluttered looking with a bunch of very obvious looking
advertisements. You do not want your visitors to see a bunch of
billboard type ads but rather ads which blend in with both your blogs
colors and topic. AdSense does this very well and by using Blogger to
host your blog the process is very simple.


AdSense does not allow you to select the specific ads which appear on
your site, but it does an amazing job of keeping them in line with the
content on your site. AdSense also allows you to exclude ads from
your direct competitors on your website if for some reason they
happen to appear on your site. If for example you have a blog on
which you sell your own goat cheese, the last thing you want in
advertising is your competitor who also sells goat cheese coming up on
the ads. Google understands this and allows you to easily exclude
those ads from your AdSense ads. This is done on the AdSense
console and we will cover that later in this eBook.