Are You a Poor Blogger? Here’s How Your Blog Can Make You Richer !

Guest Post - Our host is Efoghor Joseph Ezie, In this post he looks at how many Bloggers are struggling to monetize their blogs and provides some tips to help.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

You can be considered a poor blogger if you’ve been in blogging business for over six months and you cannot make at least a hundred dollars per month. If you have been investing your time, money and intellect into your business and your AdSense account is still in the reds, then you don’t have a success story.

How about having been on the Net for over two years and your Google AdSense account is no where near $50? Your guest is as good as mine. Blogging is supposed to be a full time business to a lot of people who are doing it; and when for months and years no tangible income comes into your pocket you are a poor blogger.

I know some would like to criticize me by saying that blogging success is not only measured by the amount of money one gets. They may want to excuse themselves by saying that success could be measured in terms of the number of people who have benefited directly or indirectly from your content.

But providing quality content and making others happy but you end up a debtor, with no money to renew your Internet subscription, pay your domain and hosting renewals and even feed yourself still does not translate to a success story.

If you are still in the categories mentioned above, here are a few things you could do to change you story:
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How To Add Your BuySellAds Marketplace Page To Your Blog

BuySellAds.Com (BSA) is by far the most popular direct advertising site for Bloggers.Recently BuySellAds updated the site to version 3 introducing not only a fresh new design but also some new options for Publishers.One of these options is to place your Marketplace page on your actual blog.The Marketplace page is the page people are directed to on BuySellAds when they click the Advertise Here banners on your site, the page displaying your available ad spots and stats.

BSA call this option the Ad Sales Widget "..Show your ad availability and pricing right on your website. Most publishers use this as their entire "Advertise" page for their website.."

You can see a demo of the Ad Sales Widget for Spice Up Your Blog Here.

If your not yet a user of BSA or have had trouble getting approved take a look at out post "BuySellAds.Com Review And Interview With Founder Todd Garland"

Add The BuySellAds Ad Widget To Your Blog

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Make Money On Blogger With Google Affiliate Ads

Blogger have introduced a new way to make money with your blog.Google Affiliate Ads can be easily added to your posts to display links and image ads connected to your content.The ads run through your AdSense account, payments will be added to your AdSense account so of course you will need an AdSense account to run the Affiliate ads.The ads can be easily added via the post settings in your Blogger Post Editor.Importantly Google Affiliate ads are only available to Bloggers in the USA.The Blogger team put together the video below to explain how it works.
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How To Add Colorful Css Animations To BuySellAds Banners

I'm sure you will all have noticed the effect i have added to the BuySellAds.Com ad banners on this blog.I think the effect is awesome and brings more attention to the ads which keep our advertisers happy.The first time i seen this type of effect was on the awesome Css Tricks by Chris Coyier.With the help Of Harish from Custom Blogger Templates and Way2Blogging i managed to get a version for this blog.I have had many requests for the code in the past but as the idea was originally from Chris i was slow to share it.However as Css Tricks no longer use the effect and i have seen it used on lots of other blogs which i presumed viewed the source of this blog to copy the code I think it's the right time to do a tutorial.The effect is created using only Css.

Remember this is set up to work only with ads and Advertise Here banners from BuySellAds.Com.For the 125x125 banners your sidebar will need to be at least 300px wide.Wordpress and other users can add the Css from the scroll box below to their style sheet , below i have a Blogger tutorial.
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The 7 Top Tips Direct From AdSense To Earn More From Your Blog

A few weeks ago i told you how i managed to get my mistakenly closed AdSense account reopened.In that post i mentioned how, ironic as it seemed at the time while my AdSense account was closed i received a booklet from Google AdSense with some tips to increase earnings.The booklet had some general tips and some specific tips for Spice Up Your Blog.I know AdSense don't send these booklets to everyone so in this post i will share the tips AdSense gave.Apart from the tips specifically for my sites there was 7 general tips that i think can help everyone make more money with AdSense.
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BuySellAds.Com Review And Interview With Founder Todd Garland

In this post we will look at BuySellAds.Com (BSA), a site that makes selling direct advertising on your blog quick and easy while leaving you in control.I also have a short interview with Founder and CEO Todd Garland, Todd took the time to answer a few questions i thought would relate directly to Spice Up Your Blog readers.

BSA was created with the intention of taking the pain out of buying and selling ads, a process that otherwise is time consuming and frustrating.They also display your blog to potential advertisers you otherwise would not be able to attract, advertisers can find your blog in the BSA directory when searching for suitable publishers.

So lets first take a run through the process.

Quick Overview Of BuySellAds.Com

1. Submit your blog - BSA review all blogs before they can join the programme.Your blog must be established, have unique content and a healthy number of monthly impressions.

2. Create Your Ad Zones - Once accepted you can log in and create some zones for ads, Popular zones are the header and sidebar.The main script must be added first then you are provided with code for the actual area the ads appear - Create An Ad Zone Tutorial.

3. Advertise Here - Once you have the ad code in the zones the grey "Advertise Here" banner will appear.Visitors to your blog can click on the banner to view your directory page and purchase ads.

4. Ad Sold - As soon as an advertiser buys an ad the Advertise Here banner will automatically be replaced with their ad.

5. Cash Out - You can request a cash out via Paypal, Cheque or wire transfer once you have $50 Now $20 in your account.

6. Our Fancy Colorful Effects On Banners - You may have noticed the cool effect we use on the BuySellAds banners.Find out how to create it on your blog here : Buysellads.com banner ad effect tutorial.

Remember you are in control of the ad spots you make available, the price you charge and you can change your settings so you have to pre-approve any ads before they are displayed.You can get a full list of help articles from installing the ad zones to getting paid here - BuySellAds Help

Interview With BSA Founder Todd Garland

I asked the BSA Founder and CEO a few questions, here is what he had to say.

Spice Up Your Blog - I notice most of the sites selling ads on BuySellAds are in the Technology And Web Design Niche.First, do you accept sites from all niches and have you advertisers looking to advertise on other niches ?

Todd Garland - Yes, we accept sites form all niches, from cupcakes, to weddings, to motorcycle blogs and more. We are much stronger in the tech than other verticals, but we’re always working to increase activity for both advertisers and publishers across many verticals outside of tech.

SUYB - As most of my readers are Blogger users have you a policy when it comes to accepting blogs using the Blogger Sub Domain (Blogspot) ? I hear blogs using the sub domain are less likely to be accepted.

TG - That is correct. In our experience, .blogger sites tend to have lower traffic than is required to sell ads directly to advertisers with a system like BSA. Sure, there are edge cases and this does not apply to all .blogger sites.

SUYB - Are the links in the Ads Do-Follow ?

TG - We don’t specify. The ads are served us using JavaScript and we do not sell them with the intent of the ads passing any SEO value.

SUYB - Apart from Impressions what do you think is a sites main selling point (Alexa Rank, Page Rank, Followers, Fans etc..) ?

TG - I think it’s the quality of content on their site and the number of existing advertisers they have.

SUYB - What tips if any would you give to users to help sell more ads ?

TG - Write the best content you can write, hustle, and grow your community.

Sponsored Tweets

At the time of writing BuySellAds.Com have just launched a new feature called Sponsored Tweets.As the name suggests advertisers can "Buy A Tweet" on your Twitter account.For more information check out the BSA Blog Post On Sponsored Tweets.

You can view the Spice Up Your Blog listing on BuySellAds.Com or Submit Your Blog to BuySellAds.Com and start selling ads today.

Drop Your Comments, Views And Questions Below.

Why Alexa Rank Is Important How To Increase Your Blogs Alexa Rank

Alexa has been around for 14 years checking and ranking the traffic levels for every site online.Alexa use toolbars installed on millions of users browsers to track the hits sites are getting.Every time someone with the Alexa Toolbar installed lands on your Blog it increases your Ranking.That's all interesting and it's fun to check out the top 10 sites online or the top 100 in your country but why is it important to have a high Alexa Rank and what can you do to improve your blogs Alexa rank ?

Why Alexa Rank Is important

The major advantage of a high Alexa rank comes into play when you look to sell ad spots on your blog.Ad Networks and Advertisers take Alexa rank very seriously when it comes to buying advertising on your site.Webmasters and Blogger also take Alex rank into consideration when it comes to linking to your site, exchanging links, submitting posts and connecting in other ways with you.Even if you don't currently sell direct Advertising on your Blog you will more than likely want to in the future so working on improving your rank now will be of great benefit.

How To Increase Your Alexa Rank

When i researched for this post i found lots of articles with huge lists of Alexa Tips And Tricks.However as i looked deeper and even in the comments for these posts a lot of these tips were shown to be bull....The first ting to do and a guaranteed way to increase your Blogs Alexa rank is Install the toolbar.

Install The Alexa Toolbar

Chances are nobody visits your blog more than you, once you install the toolbar all those visits will be ranked on Alexa.The toolbar is quiet compact and on the Chrome browser you wouldn't even know it's there.Once installed it's actually quiet interesting to have an instant ranking on every site you visit - Get the Alexa Toolbar here.

Make Your Blog Your Homepage

Once you install the toolbar set your blog to your homepage to ensure even more hits.If your family or friends didn't mind you could install the toolbar on their browser and set your blog to the homepage also.

Write A Post About Alexa

By writing a post about Alexa you may convince some of your regular readers to install the toolbar.Now when they visit your blog it's helping your blogs rank.

Others - Most of the people using the Alexa Toolbar are experienced Internet users,Webmasters and fellow Bloggers, Submit your blog to Digg, Stumble, Design Float, Reddit and other bookmarking sites these guys hang out.It's suggested adding the Alexa gadget to your blog will help but i have seen this refuted.It's suggested getting people to write a review of your blog will help, i have also seen this refuted.

That's it, Since i installed the Alexa Toolbar only 2 weeks ago i have seen Spice Up Your Blog climb from over 110,000 to under 95,000.You can find many more Blogging Resources Here, If you have any tips you think are worth considering let us know.

Drop Your Comments And Questions Below.