Friday, 14 December 2007

Submit to Free Directories

UPDATE: I now use the free version of Brad Callen's Directory Submitter instead.

There's a big debate as to whether these SEO-friendly web directories are useful of not. Some people use software to semi-automate the process, submitting their website to hundreds of sites. Matt Cutts (head of Google spam) on the other hand says that they are worthless.

My personal view is that it doesn't harm to submit to a handful, plus they'll show up on Yahoo links which will help boost the perceived value of the site to prospective purchasers.

These are the sites that I have submitted www.dailydosh.net to, it isn't by any means a comprehensive list but it's what I have used for the last year:-

Thursday, 6 December 2007

Writing a Press Release to Promote Blog

When you read a lot of blogs about making money online they tell you to send a press release (PR). But how many of you have actually done this? The main reasons people are apprehensive is because:-
  • They have never written one before
  • They don't know if they have anything newsworthy
  • They are not an expert on the topic of their website
These are certainly the reasons that have I have. However some time ago I listened to an interview that Jim Morris did with Howie Schwartz who said that he simply sends out an article with intro to the effect of "we are proud to announce the launch of a new website called..."

So last week I decided to test this out. I re-wrote an article about debt and added in a quick intro. The result was that it was accepted on some distribution sites but www.prleap.com rejected it because it wasn't in the traditional PR style. To see the PR I submitted to Press Exposure, click here.

If you use an article as a PR don't expect to get a ton of traffic however it does add to your overall linking strategy. Also, these PR distribution sites get no-where near the same amount of submissions as article directories so each link may carry more weight.

I haven't submitted to that many sites but here are the ones that accepted the article/pr:-

Tuesday, 27 November 2007

Why I Choose the Finance Niche

UPDATE: My opinions on this matter have now changed. I am not interested in completing sponsored reviews, selling links or flipping blogs. I have still been getting backlinks to my daily dosh site but I'm not ranking well for terms. Instead I'm concentrating on much easier topics which I can rank very well for and is bringing me in traffic and also good money.

Review Jobs
- I've been a member of PPP for some time now and have been frustrated by the number of "pay day loans", "mortgage advice" and "credit card application" jobs that have been available. OK, so I could slip a few in now and again to my other blogs but I really think it can be a turn off if your readers are visiting your blog to read about health, gardening or cars.

They normally don't pay all that well ($5-10), unless you have a high PR. Although they also seem to have pretty low standards and don't require you write that much. Many of the jobs I've looked at don't require any PR and you only need to write 50-100 words.

Link Sales - I've also noticed that there is great demand for finance text links on sites like Digital Point Forums. This high demand has also pushed prices up higher than general hobby sites. I saw one person look for $18 per month for a PR4 link and there were a number of responses from people looking for further info. Normally you'll struggle to get $10 for other niches.

Re-Sale - Since the last PR update a number of blogs have gone up for sale for quite a few thousand $$$. Many of them have only been a few months old yet people are prepared to pay big bucks for sites which already have links, content, readers and income. I don't know if selling dailydosh.net is something that I'll do but it'll certainly be something to consider in a few months time. I would have to take into consideration my time and cost in creating content and getting links. This technique is often called "flipping".

Traffic Considerations - The finance market is pretty saturated. It would take a lot of work, time and links to get good ranking in Google. I'm not so concerned about this because a lot of advertisers are more interested in PR. The only problem is that Google has been taking away the PR of many bloggers who write sponsored reviews. This is why PPP have introduced RealRank which will eventually replace PR.

However other sites such as blogsvertize may keep using PR as their main way of calculating fees. One thing you'll learn about making money online is that there is no single "right" method. Don't expect things to stand still either, keep reading blogs and make sure you don't get left behind.

Choosing a Theme for Daily Dosh NET

Ideally I would have used the blog theme Blog Oh Blog V2.0 but decided I wanted the theme up and running quickly so used Clean Copy 2.

Blog Oh Blog and Advertising

The reason I wanted to use the BOB theme is because there is a space at the top for a banner. There aren't many themes that have this ability. Also I like the 2 right-hand sidebars which are ideal for more advertising.

I will at some point change to this theme but not for a while because I need to have a header designed and make some tweaks so that it works with various plugins.

Why I Choose Clean Copy 2

Sometimes things never get done because they are out of your comfort zone. I already have CC2 set up for various other blogs so installing it was very easy. Also the images that come with the PLR pack work well for the header graphic.

The time I have saved means I can get on with re-writing PLR, link exchanges etc.

Wednesday, 14 November 2007

An intro to making money from blogging

If you've done any online marketing or blogging at all you'll probably know about sites such as Sponsored Reviews, Pay Per Post and Blogsvertize. For those who don't what these sites do is connect advertisers with bloggers in order to promote their products or services.

As a blogger you can receive various amounts of money depending on what sort of Google Page Rank and alexa rankings you have. What you need to do is set up a blog, whether it be with self-hosted or on a free service like blogger or blogspot. Then start writing about the topic you have chosen a couple of times per week. Once your blog is one month old you can then sign up with blogsvertize who will probably start sending you jobs for about $5. Once the blog is 3 months old you can then sign up with the other services.

What a blogger needs to do is write about the company's website and give a review of it. Some companies look for honest opinions whilst others look for you to only write about the positives.

Anyway, I started DailyDosh.net just the other day and have been writing various articles about debt and set them up to autopost every 3 days. The site isn't currently indexed, has no PR and no traffic but in a month I hope to start earning some money writing reviews.