Internet E Club

The most popular question sent to our support team, is “How to become a successful blogger and earn money?”. We always had been providing guidance to our bloggers individually, on a case-by-case basis to improve their blog. But we thought this article would help all our bloggers to succeed in their efforts.

More Traffic – More Money
Many successful bloggers around the globe earn very good income from their blog. Here is a simple math. For every 1000 page views on your blog, you could earn anywhere from $2 to $10, depending on the topic your blog specializes. So target for 1000 visits per month to begin with and continuously raise your standards.

Many top blogs on an average get over Million page views a month. So, you calculate what they may be earning.

It Takes Time
Professional bloggers evolve over time as they develop skills and attitude to improve their blogging. For some, it’s natural but many need practice and the commitment to shine their skills. So, don’t give up.

Pick Your Favorite Topic
For gaining the reader’s interest and to turn visitors into your readers, your blog must provide useful information on a specialized topic. Pick any topic that you really like.

If you are not clear, do some research to understand what people are searching for, on the internet. Google Trends and Google zeitgeist are useful.

Stay on Top
Stay up-to-date with what is happening around. Do your best to post the latest information or any developments on your blog, on the topic you selected. Posting current affairs on your blog could bring more visitors to your blog.

What You Write Matters
Content is the key for any successful blog. Do not just write, but try to communicate your message to the readers. Write in simple language. Make use of examples to articulate.

Do not steal someone else’s content. Not only it is unethical, but also the duplicate content will make search engines to penalize your blog.

No Discipline - No Success
Nothing can be achieved with out hard work and discipline. Create a plan when and how much time you will spend on your blog. Stick to the plan. Make it a habit to regularly update your blog. Ask this question to your self. Will you read any news website; if the news is few days old?

Create Connection with Readers
Effective communication is very important. In your articles express your thoughts clearly and ask for reader’s opinions. More importantly, respond to those comments.

And the list goes on. We will stop there and wish you all the very best.

We had been getting many queries not to show Ads on the blog homepages or show fewer. So we have been experimenting for some time to see which type of visitors tend to click on ads and generate revenue for you on the blog and how the ads on homepage perform.

Following is an anonymized graph from Google Analytics, using a sample of 90 days data, shows the percentage of ads clicked by visitors coming from different sources.

It’s clearly evident that the visitors sent by search engines are generating 90% of the revenue that a blog earns. Though you see 19% direct visitors clicked on the ads, most of them were originally came from search engine results, for the first time.

And, further analysis has shows that 96% of search engine visitors do not land on a blog’s home page, but directly on a post.

So it appears that showing no ads/fewer ads on the home page has almost zero impact on the blog’s revenue.

Lately, Google has been strict on the new applications for the AdSense. Here are few tips that could get your AdSense application approved.

• Do not apply for AdSense with empty blogs where there is not much content.
• Make sure your blog has unique content and it provides some value to visitors.
• Do not copy content from other sites. Also do not post copied articles from free article websites. They also badly affect your blog’s search engine ranking, due to content duplication.
• Make sure you regularly write on your blog.
• Do not add lots of affiliate marketing links / sidebar widgets from all sorts of websites, unless they are very relavent to the content on your blog.
• Do not create a blog purely for search engine optimization.

Now your visitors can spread the word about your blog posts to their friends using Emails, IMs, and Social Networks. They can also reblog about it or bookmark it on social bookmarking sites with the new Tell-a-Friend which appears below every post.

SocialTwist’s Tell-A-Friend widget, customized exclusively for Blog.co.in is now available on all user blogs. It is enabled automatically for all the blogs and is shown at the bottom of each post.

It’s an easy and effective way to tell your friends about a post you just wrote or read on a blog. You can even bookmark it to popular social bookmarking websites such as del.icio.us, Digg, etc.

That’s just another reason to be a part of happy Blog.co.in family

Take a couple of minutes to explore it’s cool features. Give it a try, you gotta love this!

Here is a screenshot in action.

Adding image gallery is a simple task. Just follow the steps in the order as given in the screenshots below.

XML Sitemaps are automatically generated for all the blogs. They can be accessed via the URL http://interneteclub.com/sitemap.xml

For example, sitemap for the blog mirror.interneteclub.com can be found at http://mirror.interneteclub.com/sitemap.xml

We also submit the sitemap URLs to Google and other popular search engines, each time a new post / page is written on the blog.

This should help in improving the search engine rankings of your blog.

It is as simple as typing [ contact-form] in the post / page, wherever you want the form to appear. Following are some screenshots in action.

You can optimize your blog for Search Engines. Every post/page can have their own meta description, title, meta keywords. On the post/page editor scroll down to see the options. Below is the screehshow.

You can publish posts/pages in 8 indian languages. Currently Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Bengali, Punjabi, Gujarati and Malayalam are supported.

All you need to do is pick the language on the post/page editor and start writing. It works just like Google’s Indic translator. http://www.google.co.in/transliterate/indic/

Following is a screenshot of this feature in action.

One of the ways you can make your blog more engaging for readers is to consider adding a feature that some bloggers are increasingly avoiding using – an About page. One of the most viewed pages on a blog are About. People reading the blog are a little curious about what the blog is about and who is writing it.

Why have an About Page?

There are a number of advantages of About pages that bloggers should consider.

• Transparency: This is one of those words of the moment around the blogging community – everyone is calling for bloggers to be as transparent as possible, to name their interests, income sources, objectives etc – an about page can play a part in this.
• Engagement: Some bloggers prefer to write in a more impersonal style. But blending a bit of humour, personality and emotion from time to time in blogging and an About page can really help create a more personal connection with your readers. Sure not everyone appreciate the ‘gush’ – but plenty of your readers will appreciate a little more information on the person they’re reading.
• Highlighting Key Pages: An About page has the ability to propel your readers deep within your site to your key posts. Is there an article that you’re particular proud of that sums up what you’re blog is about? Is there a sponsor you want to highlight? Is there a page with an income stream that you’d like to expose all your readers to? Are there some categories that you’d like to highlight? Your About page will get read – and its an opportunity to introduce your readers (particularly first timers) to your key pages.

Key Features for Your About Page

So what should an About Page include? This is really a matter of personal preference and something we’d like to hear your opinions on but here are a few things to consider:

• Photo: People like to see some sort of picture of the person they are reading. It definitely adds value.
• Blog objectives: Succinctly sum up the point of your blog. What is it about? What will readers gain from it?
• Introduce Yourself: You probably want to keep your introduction down to a short one – but particularly talk about your experience with the topic you’re writing about. Why should they listen to you? What is your context and background?
• Introduce Blogging: Depending on your topic you might want to introduce the idea of a blog (or at least link to an article/post about it). Many first time blog readers don’t understand things like categories, comments, RSS etc. Also point them at some good starting points in your blog – key articles etc.
• Contact Details: Consider giving your readers a way of getting in touch with you. Again its about transparency and interactivity.

How do you create an About Page?

The simplest way to do it is to write a normal post on your blog titled ‘About (insert your name, or your blog’s name here)’. You might want to change the date of your post to an older one if you have that capability. Then simply link to your own post from your sidebar or menu where ever you want to place it.

Other Factors

• Privacy: Its common sense really but its worth saying. Most good bloggers have boundaries around privacy – its worth thinking it through and sticking to them.
• Keep it Short: Again – common sense here. Yes people want to know about you – but only to a point. Don’t ramble.
• Keep it Relevant: Don’t take the opportunity to tell readers about your whole life if your blog is on a niche topic.
• Make it Prominent: Don’t hide your About Page away. Put it high on your side bar, menu or in your header. People won’t use it if they don’t see it.

By no means is this a definitive guide to everything you’ll find on a good About Page.