Personal Development - for the entrepreneur

What is Technorati

As Literati stands for an intellectual society of people interested in literature or words, Technorati stands for a society of intellectuals for technology. Technorati is a search engine for blogs. It ranks blogs basing on the links the they are having with other related blogs.

How Technorati Helps in Getting More Traffic

Getting Technorati on your blog is the surest way of increasing traffic to your blog if you have met the other minimum requirements like writing good content and designing a good blog. When your blog gets a good ranking it becomes easy for people to find it with Technorati tags. With Technorati on your blog, the chances of search engine optimization with other blogs also increase.

The Process of Getting Technorati on Your Blog

It’s a simple process much like all such signing up processes. Rather it’s simpler. You just go to www.technorati.com and click on the ‘Join’ tab. You have to create your profile and set up your account. After the account is set, you have to type in your blog’s URL to claim your blog.

Once you have claimed your blog, you should go to ‘Configure this Blog’ field and fill in whatever you feel is appropriate. Then you need to select “Include this blog on Technorati’s Blog Finder”.You should again be careful here while filling out the keywords or tags your blog is dealing with. After that you click on “Save Changes” and be ready to get two codes.

The two codes will have separate uses. If your blog is powered by Blogger and you have no direct control over it then you will need the “Link Code”. On Other hand if your blog uses Wordpress you should copy the “Embed Code”.

Now you are all set to be searched by Technorati. Add the ping link to Technorati so that whenever you update your blog, Technorati will notice it.

That’s the Question Every Blogger Has

There are so many ways of earning money through your blog. But the question really is how do you increase traffic to your blog? Though higher traffic doesn’t guarantee higher income but it is an essential requisite for higher income. Without traffic all the money making links on your blog is going to be of no use.

We have discussed how writing good content with the healthy spread of keywords is just one way. Other significant things also we have touched upon like: designing an aesthetically pleasing website, participating in blog carnivals, and linking with other websites or networks.

Here are some more tips on increasing traffic:

• Update your blog regularly. Your blog should have more content every week to get noticed. The funda is simple – the more you blog the more content you have available for search engines. So when somebody searches for a topic he is more likely to find it in your blog, provided that you have written about it. All content must be of good quality.

• Submit your blog to all the search engines, but avoid paying for search engines that ask fees for submission. You appear in their radar sooner or later anyway. Always provide a real email address when you submit your blog to search engines. They will ask confirmation by email. And when answering what are the areas you write on, MAKE SURE THAT YOU MENTION ONLY THOSE AREAS THAT YOU ARE BLOGGING ABOUT. Supposing you don’t cover boxing in your blog but mention about it in your search engine submission details, then your blog will get pulverized by boxing heavyweight blogs and your ranking will plummet.

• Also always tag your content. This helps search engines to rank your content better.

More on getting traffic in the next few articles…

Amazon Associates

Associates is an affiliate marketing program of Amazon. It allows you to link Amazon products and services to your web site content. It improves readership of your website as well as earn revenue for you and Amazon through the sales of Amazon products advertised in you site.

For example, if you are running a movie related blog or website, you can provide links to movie DVDs and CDs on Amazon. You can also link to books on movie stars and Hollywood celebrities from Amazon. A 10% commission is paid out to you on each sale that comes through your blog.

The process is simple. Just join Amazon’s Associates Central. This is the place where you will build your links and keep updated about Associate’s latest. The Build Links tools in Associate Central enable you to build your links. You can track your referral traffic reports online. The reports are updated daily and you are paid referral fees monthly.

LinkShare

LinkShare is the largest network of affiliate partners that has over 10 million partners. Some of the Fortune 500 companies are the clients of LinkShare. You can advertise their products on your blog or website if your content matches with their products and services.

The process is same like any other such process. You have to register your blog with LinkShare first. It is free. Then you choose the products that you would like display on your blog. You will be paid by LinkShare for the purchases made through your blog.

You can choose from 500 top online merchants and sell their products on your blog. Some of the companies include Walmart, Dell, Disneystore, JCPenny etc. You get to be associated with prestigious brands and the commission you earn on each sales is handsome too.

Making Your Blog Chitika Friendly

Chitika is a hot and happening alternative to AdSense. It can co exist with SdSense on your blog as long as they are not pertaining to the same context.

Chitika advertisement products work best on websites that have more than 10,000 page views per month. Chitika accepts websites only in English language. Hope they will widen the scope to include non English sites as well. Chitika also requires that you maintain your blog regularly. Chitika works best for websites that market products or run descriptions of products.

Websites catering to Asian countries may not find great favor with Chitika as they have fewer advertisers from that region. Advertisers do not target Asian countries and hence the lack of enthusiasm on the part of Chitika for Internet users from that region. Chitika is an organization founded by an Asian or rather an Indian to be precise and that the term Chitika which means “in a snap” is derived from a Indian language - Telugu, but business is buisness.

The Process of Running Chitika on Your Blog

Signing up for Chitia is an easy process and shouldn’t take more than a few minutes. Please go through their terms and conditions page. It precludes certain types of sites and if your site doesn’t belong those categories then you can safely register it.

Withi 24 hours your application will be processed and you will be allowed to run Chitika ad programs on your blog. Chitika doesn’t allow you to reveal your details of earnings through their ad programs. While you can go public with your monthly earnings from Chitika you are prohibited to make public about click values, CTC etc.

Now you have to be careful about running AdSense along with Chitika. Make sure that the Chitika ad programs you are running are non contextual by checking your ad code for Chitika. Chitika has default ad codes that are non contextual, you just have to ensure that you are running the right ad code.

Yes, What are They?

Chitika eMiniMalls is a type of advertising product from the leading merchandising network for bloggers – Chitika. In simple words it is an ad that you run on your blog and get paid for doing that.

Chitika (www.chitika.com) is a blogger driven merchandizing shopping network. There are more than 12,000 blogs and websites participating in the Chitika advertising programs. Chitika is an advertising agent that facilitates advertisement of products of its enlisted companies or advertisers. Blogs and websites registered with Chitika are the hosts or publishers of these ads. The publishers of Chitika ad banners or Chitika eMiniMalls are paid like AdSense pay per click method.

The advertisers pay Chitika a negotiated ad fee. Chitika shares that revenue with the ad publishers – you, for hosting Chitika eMiniMalls.

Other Products from Chitika

Of the many advertisement products from Chitika eMiniMalls is just one. The other products are RPU, Shopcloud$, Shoplines, Owna, and Linx.

In case of eMiniMalls, the readers click on an ad banner that contains a picture of the product being advertised, this leads to another website containing full information about the product. But in case of RPU the ad is published as a text that’s hyperlinked to the product website or company website.

Linx is an advertisement program that will underline keywords or key products from your content and when a user brings the mouse above the keyword a bubble scroll will appear over the word with links to websites about various related products. This ad program earns on a pay per click basis.

You can visit the www.chitika.com and check out the products.

Getting started with Chitika eMiniMalls or other Chitika ad products are easy. You just need to register with them as a publisher. And then you will be set on the process of making money through Chitika.

Let’s Check the Figures

No dilly dallying here. Let’s check the figures straight away. How much money exactly can one website make from Chitika eMiniMalls? A top earner from Chitika eMiniMalls claims (substantiates the claim with figures too) that 17 of his websites have earned him more than $600 in a single day. That is more than $30 per day per website. Not a bad amount. A thousand dollars a month is a good amount from a single website.

Let’s be realistic

You may not be a top earner and end up somewhere in the mid range. That could still mean $15 a day and nearly $500 per month. Not a bad figure either.

Here is the good news. The top earner’s approximate earning figures that we have quoted here are soon going to touch $50 per day per website. And he is not the real top earner. The real top earning websites from Chitika eMiniMalls make more money than this. But they do not come forward to make their earnings public.

So $15 per day is a conservative average. The actual average could be more if we take into account the money real top earning websites are making from Chitika eMiniMalls.

Some Facts

It takes some time before you can start earning with Chtika eMiniMalls. Unlike Text Link Ads that start earning you right from the day one of your hosting the website and putting the ads, Chitika ad systems work best for sites that get a minimum of 10,000 page views a month. To notch up that much page views per month will definitely take some time.

So you will have to assiduously build up your site’s traffic to run Chitika eMiniMalls. But once you do that your earnings can be on par with Google AdSense.

Getting Popular

Text Link Ads are gaining popularity for one thing – you are paid simply for hosting an ad and not through click basis for hosting ads on your website. Once you host an ad on your website through Text Link Ads you are paid a fixed amount. It doesn’t matter if anybody clicks on the ads or not. Unlike Google AdSense where you are paid on the basis click on the ads on your website Text Link Ads just pays you for hosting ads on your website.

Text Link Ads are double edged swords that benefit both the host and the advertiser.

The Process

In order to be able to act as a host for Text Link Ads:

1-You need to have an account as a publisher with www.Text-Link-Ads.com. Once the account is set, you will have to go through a process that’s somewhat similar to Google’s AdSense process.

2-You need to go to ‘Submit a site’ and furnish a few details of your website like: the URL, description, etc. You will get an email confirming the approval of your website.

3-Then you need to go to ‘Install ad code’ section and select PHP as the language.

4- After that you need to select the format of the ads. This will allow you to arrange for the color, font, background, and number of ads per row.

5-Now you will get a key code in XML. You will have to execute the XML code in your website. For the first 12/24 hours or so you will get a test ad and after that the test ad will make way for real ads. It may take days or weeks for real ads to appear.

Any ad that appears on your website by Text Link Ads will be promptly intimated to you through emails. And you will be paid promptly.

Accepting Donations

Well, it’s not my job to preach you about accepting donations for your blog. It is a decision that you have to make. Are you comfortable with accepting donations? Some people are not comfortable with monetizing their blogs, let alone accepting donations. But since you have already made up your mind about monetizing your blog you should have no problem in accepting donations.

There is nothing wrong with this. It takes hours to write a blog. If you think that your labor and the valuable info that you publish in your blog deserves to be paid then you should ask for donations from people. After all, you are not forcing anyone to pay you. People are free to donate as much as they wish.

All types of labor must be respected and compensated. Writing a blog by all means is an act of hard work. Though it’s not physical labor there are a lot of grey cells involved in the process and it deserves compensation.

Moreover, there are many people who feel it improper to use anything for free, especially when they use a thing for which somebody has worked hard. You will be amazed that you can rake in neat sums through this method.

Setting it Up

PayPal needs no introduction. Setting up a PayPal account is very easy and setting up the PayPal donation in your website is equally easy. Hope you are familiar with PayPal. The link provided below gives the detail of setting up PayPal donation system in your website.

https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/xcl/rec/donate-intro-outside

It is a very convenient method of making or receiving payment. All the reader or visitor of your blog needs to do is to click on the PayPal donation tab. And then that would lead to a PayPal page where the visitor has to log in and make a payment of his choice. The amount gets transferred to your PayPal account immediately. Fast and easy.

AdSense Dos and Don’ts

• Do open an AdSense account immediately after you launch your website or blog.

• Do provide clear addresses and information in the AdSense registration form.

• Make sure that the information you are providing is accurate as your AdSense income is taxable. So stay clear of trouble and take all care to furnish verifiable information.

• Do go through the AdSense Macromedia Flash demos.

• Feel free to ask questions to the AdSense customer support team.

• Do not apply for more than one AdSense account for a single person.

• Do not give fishy information to AdSense. If caught your AdSense account is most likely to be suspended.

AdSense Payment Facts

Payment from ads on your website is made out once your account accumulates more than $100. You can get the detail report of your earnings from your AdSense account. Just log in and click on the reports tab. After your unpaid earnings cross $100 you will be paid the amount thirty days later. For example if your unpaid earnings cross $100 on March 15^th you will be paid the amount on April 15^th.

Payment can be secured either through electronic fund transfer or through checks. If you do not receive the check or funds even after the same being issued by Google AdSense the amount can be credited back to your account after you report the incident. You should give sometime to the AdSense people to verify your claim.

Payments are made after 15^th of every month provided there is a minimum earning of $100 in the previous month. And you are expected to remove ‘hold’ on your payment by 15^th of the month to facilitate payment. ‘Hold’ can be removed by providing the necessary tax information and PIN number.

Different forms of AdSense

Now you know that signing up for AdSense is an easy process that takes just a few minutes. Of course, you need to spend some time reading their terms and conditions.

Google AdSense assigns you a set of codes for content, search, and referrals after signing up successfully. AdSense for content are the ads of advertisers with Google that matches to your website. AdSense for search are the ads that are Google’s own ads that you put on your blog or website. Under referrals you can chose products from Google’s list and advertise them on your website.

How to Go About It

Practically speaking, the process of using AdSense is all about getting an AdSense code on you website. Once an AdSense account is set, you have to log in first. Then you need to click on the AdSense set up tab. That will offer you three options: AdSense for content, search, and referrals. Depending on your need you need to click on the appropriate field. For instance, if it’s the content you want then upon clicking AdSense for content, you will be lead to a page – Choose Ad Type. This page offers you a choice of ‘Ad unit’ and ‘Link unit’. These terms are self explanatory and after choosing one from the two you will move to the next page – Choose Ad Format and Colors.

The next page is - Choose Ad Channels and the final page is –Ad code. Now Ad code is the thing that you have been looking for. This is a HTML code that is given by AdSense, which you need to copy and paste on your website exactly as it is.

Finishing Touches

A list of ads appears automatically on your website at places and in the form that you have chosen in ‘Choose Ad Format and Colors’ page with in 48 hrs. You can filter out ads that you do not wish to be displayed by using the ‘Competitive Ad Filter’ tab in your AdSense account page. Now the stage is set. It all depends how many visitors click on what type of ads to determine your revenue.