Blogginggems

Short tail vs. Long tail keywords

2009-11-18T10:16:00.000-08:00

Did you already add Google Analytics to your blog? If no, then check out my how to add Google Analytics to your blog article and add this powerful usertracking tool to your fresh blog.

Most of you already have and there is something really nice about Analytics. You can see what keywords people used in the searchengines to find your blog. Take a quick look at the keywords. You can find them in traffic sources -> keywords. If you already have some visitors coming through search engines then you can find a list of the keywords people used. Most of these keywords are rather long.

Example: If your site is in the Insurance niche you might expect the keyword Insurance at one of the top positions. However I doubt there is even one visitor to your fresh blog using that particular keyword. Instead you might find keywords like affordable sportscar insurance or maybe Which insurance should I buy? These keywords are rather long, yet they are your main source of new readers. Why? Let's have a look.

There are literally millions of websites or blogs competing for the keyword insurance. When a user searches for insurance then he doesn't want to see all results, he will most often just look at the first page of the google search. So only 10 websites are lucky enough to get the users attention. However not all people search for such a short keyword, also know as short tail keyword. Instead they search for more specific things, which are called long tail keywords.

People might look for a specific insurance or maybe insurances from a certain location. Here is your chance to grab some traffic. Because there are much less webmasters than people just surfing the net, there are always some keywords that is not used on any website so far. Or at least few websites use a certain long tail keyword. Still some people search this keyword. You have to get backlinks with this particular text to get on page one of google for this particular long tail keyword. However you don't need many backlinks for a specific long tail keyword, because competition is low normally. Soon you will get a constant inflow of users for this long tail keyword and it's easy to do.

Take a piece of paper. Write your main keyword in the middle of the paper. Now add other things related, add adjectives or form questions like "How to ..." related to your topic. These are your long tail keywords. Write articles on your blog focusing on one, two or three of these keywords in each article. Additional get some backlinks to your blog with these specific backlinks and enjoy new visitors to your niche blog.

Submit your blog to Baidu.com

2009-11-15T11:03:00.001-08:00

We have previously talked about submitting your new blog to a search engine. I showed you how to add your blog to google. A pretty easy job which can help a lot. Today I want to help you to add your precious blog to another search engine called Baidu. The web adress is baidu.com

Baidu is a Chinese search engine, so you might wonder why you would do that. The answer is simple. You want to diversify the ways readers can find your blog. It's a question of not putting all eggs into one basket. When one reader source dries up you still want to have a dozen other sources to remain relaxed and keep enjoying your hard earned income. So let's jump right into it and add to the Chinese baidu search engine.

Submitting to the Chinese search engine baidu is easy. Just head over to http://www.baidu.com/search/url_submit.html, enter your address into the big empty field, fill in the captcha into the small empty field and hit the submit button next to it. Done! Chinese people can now find your blog. And there are many Chinese people, more than 1.3 billion to be exact. Only few of them actually use English while browsing the net, but after a while you might get some hits from there as well. It takes a few weeks until your site is indexed, so don't worry if you don't see results within days. Furthermore the baidu is small for the English internet. Expect 1 baidu visitor for 2000 google visitors, but this depends on factors like what your blog is all about. If you write in Chinese, baidu will be great for you. By the way.... adding blogspot blogs to baidu won't be helpful. Blogspot is banned in China. If you have a blog outside of blogspot.com it's all right to add.

If you want to know more about how to get started making your blog popular, just dig around here on Blogginggems. I have some useful posts for any kind of problem you might encounter while blogging. Enjoy!

Promoting with Stumbleupon

2009-05-31T13:38:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we talked about promoting a blog with direcotries. Luckily these directories are not the only way to promote Your blog. Today we will dive into the waters of Social Bookmarking sites. Stumbleupon will be todays point of focus and I'll help to get the basics of this powerful promoting tool.

First of all, let's take a short look at Social Bookmarking in general, to understand why Stumbleupon is a good start. Every Social Bookmarking site works in a different way, and the chances for success can be quite high in one of those sites, will with another You really work Your ass of and hardly get anything back. Stumbleupon is pretty easy to use. You can get a nice boost of traffic even if other people do not vote for Your bookmarks. That's totally different compared to Digg, where other people need to vote for Your bookmarks to have success. However if other people vote for You, Your success will be increased even further.

How do I use Stumbleupon?

First of all get an Account with Stumbleupon.com. You have to go through the sign up process, which takes a few minutes, then You are ready to go. Stumbleupon requires an Email address, don't worry about that, so far I haven't received spam from Stumbleupon. At the end of the registration You are asked to install the Stumbleupon plugin into Your browser, which You simply accept. Once installed You will see small Stumbleupon toolbar at the top of Your browser window. Don't worry, You can hide this toolbar quite easily through the settings of Your browser.

Now You can navigate to any site of Your choice and give a thumbs up or down for the selected page. If You are the first to discover a new page, then You can enter some text to describe Your discovery. If voted positive other people will have a look at this page as well and might also vote positive which will generate even more views.

The usefulness of Stumbleupon increases over time. If You rate more sites a single vote from You can generate more views. So just stumble around for a while and have a look what other people have added to Stumbleupon. You even might get some interesting ideas to add to Your own site.

A final word of warning. Don't stumble Your own pages excessively, You might get banned which in the end hurts You. The best strategy is to only promote Your quality content through Stumbleupon, as this is the content other people will also vote positively. Stumbleupon is a good way to promote a blog and You should make it an integral part of Your promotion efforts.

Directories: Getting the word out

2009-05-30T14:47:00.000-07:00

I'm kind of proud of my blog BloggingGems already. Google has indexed my sites. I had added this earn-money-with-blogging-blog into the Google searchengine before. The next day it appeared in Google, however only Google only found 3 pages. This went on for several days, when I applied a standard trick: Reduce the number of blog posts visible per standard page. You can change this setting in Your adminpanel->Settings->Formatting. Ich chose to display 5 posts on the main page (and all other following pages).

Now that we are indexed in Google, we need to get a higher ranking for our posts, so they will be found in Google. The way to do just that is BACKLINKS. A backlink is any link from another site to Your site. Not all links are equal, some are worth a lot, others are worthless. For now use the basic rule, getting more backlinks is always better. It's impossible to get hurt by backlinks, so let's get some backlinks for Your blog.

Here the DIRECTORIES come into the picture. Directories are collections of links to different websites and blogs categorized by topic. Often there are descriptions as well. Many directories let You enter Your blog for free. My main source for fresh directories is the Sitepoint directories forum, where directory owners post their announcements. Some entries are directories where You have to pay to be accepted, most of them are free however, so go and grab the free ones to get backlinks. Backlinks will help You get a higher ranking in Google, which will finally result in more visitors to Your precious blog.

We will look into other forms of promoting Your blog later, however directories are a first start. Submit Your blog to a good bunch of directories now and after that regularly keep posting Your site to new directories. Let's get started, there is a lot of work to do now. To track Your increase of visitor-influx You could use Adsense, which is a user tracking tool. Enjoy the backlink :)

Get a Digital Camera

2009-05-24T02:00:00.000-07:00

Now You are starting out with writing Your posts, however there is more than just text. People get happy when they can use different kinds of media on Your blog. You could add pictures, videos, podcasts or interactive programs written in Flash or Java. Today I want to recommend You to use photos on Your blog. From my previous experience I can say that photos really can make a good post look excellent. On the other hand a poor blog post with a picture is not an okay post. Getting pictures is easy, there are countless of them on the web, however I feel that we should accept the laws of copyright, which prevents us to just grab any picture we want. An easy way to get cheap pictures is to take them with Your own digital camera.

A nice picture can bring a positive vibe into Your blog post

Technical requirements for Your digital camera

You can either use a real digital camera, or the one integrated in Your mobile phone or smartphone. If You use a mobile devices camera You really want at least 3 megapixels. I took my first blog pictures with a Sony Ericsson K800i, which has exactly 3 megapixels. People couldn't tell if it was from a mobile phone or a real camera. With 3 megapixels You get an smooth image which looks really fine after cropping and resizing. Todays mobile phones with 5 megapixels and more should easily do.

If You decide to use a real digital camera then things are easy for You. You can buy almost any camera. 5 mexgapixel devices cost less than $US 100, so just head to Your local electronics store and grab one. Zoom is nice, but ignore the digital zoom. Digital zoom on the camera makes Your pictures look ugly and You can still digitally zoom them on You computer if the need arises. You will crop Your pictures anyways, so don't care about the digital zoom.

Take better pictures

Here some basic tips for taking pictures:

Let Your camera rest on something solid while taking the picture. This way the picture will be much crisper. A table, a rock or a tree will mostly do. If there is no horizontal place to rest Your camera on, consider pushing it against something solid from the side.

If You photograph something badly lit against a bright background, force the camera to use the lightning. Let's say You want to take a picture of a person who is in the shaddow and no further than a few meters from the camera, but the background is all well sunlit, the camera will decide the picture is fine without lightning. Here You have to forc the lightning on.

Taking a picture at night can create an exciting image. However the lightning can destroy the mood. Take additional pictures without lightning using the night mode of Your camera. Make sure the camera firmly rests on something solid.

Putting You object of interest into the middle of the picture is a standard way of taking pictures. Make Your pictures more exciting by putting the interesting object to the side of the picture, while the other half of the picture is filled with background. Try unusual angles by photographing from a high or low position. Experiment!

Lastly I want to pint You to some free picture editing software. First there is Irfanview which I use for basic cropping and simple resizing. And second there is the free GIMP for advanced picture editing. That's enough for today, take Your camera now and take some pictures. Take pictures whenever You see something interesting. You might want to use these beautiful pictures on Your precious blog someday.

Win up to $US 20000 at BusinessAdviceForum

2009-05-21T04:38:00.000-07:00

We haven't covered the art of promotion yet, but I'd like to show You a good example on how to do it. Maybe You never heard of BusinessAdviceForum.com before, but they decided to put some proper website promotion in place to get more awareness. BusinessAdviceForum is a webforum for entrepreneurs, freelancers and webworkers to exchange opinions on how to start and lead a business, the focus is definitely on beginning and startup of a business.

So the guy behind BusinessAdviceForum, Fergal, decided it's time to run a proper promotion. He decided to run a competition, where participants can win a total of $US 20000. A single lucky winner can take the main prize which is $US 10000.

To increase participation and awareness Fergal decided to run several competitions, where forum readers have to do certain things to be included into the competition. Also there are different tasks to do for participants, so it is fun and involves the reader.

Furthermore the high price will make sure backlinks to the forum pop up, as quite some blogs want to write about this high cash prize and that is exactly what You want to achieve when You give out freebies and other expensive prizes for Your valuable readers and members. Getting the word out will help You get more readers in the long run. We will talk about promotion using a competition later on. Even if You do not want to take part I can highly recommend You to have a look and see how the prize money converts into new members at BusinessAdviceForum. A good lesson to be learned in promotion.

The competition is still ongoing and You can still get in if You like it. Just hop over to the Competition Board and check out the rules. Good luck guys.

Add Your blog to the Google searchengine

2009-05-01T04:20:00.000-07:00

Once Your blog ha its first entries it's time to add it to the google searchengine. Although it's a really simple task, beginning bloggers often don't know how to add a site to the google searchengine. Don't feel ashamed, when I had to do that the first time some years ago, I also had to ask in a forum how to do it. Here is what You want to do: First copy the address of Your blog and search for it in Google. I did a short search for http://blogginggems.blogspot.com/ and received 0 results. Google has not (yet) found my site and it's time to manually add my precious blog to the mighty google searchengine.

Just head to http://www.google.com/addurl, enter the URL of Your site, fill in the captcha, the comment field is optional, and hit submit. Well done! Your site will soon appear in the google search engine.

Find untapped high paying niches

2009-04-30T03:51:00.000-07:00

When people write a blog, they want to find those niches, that have the best paying google ads. This strategy ignores the fact, that often the high paying niches are very competitive, which means: A lot of people try their luck in the niche and many fail without reward. The strategy is still fine, but You need to add some thought to it, to make it profitable. It's all about finding some untapped high paying niche, that is not yet filled with hungry sharks.

To find those untapped high paying niches, You need to consider a few things and use Your grey mass for a moment. Once You find some untapped high paying niche, don't tell everyone about Your precious findings, instead use them by Yourself and create a blog. Here is what You want to consider:

The potential customers are wealthy (not teens)
What they are looking for involves buying a product (no humor blog, a blog about diamonds should be fine)
They possible product should be pricey (eg. auto insurance)
The topic is a subtopic of the three big desires (health, wealth and relationships)
Although many people are interested in the topic only few blogs about it are in existance

If You use these points as a guideline in Your considerations, You might find new untapped areas, that You could use for blogging. Here are some classics, to help You get an idea:

Lawyer
Real Estate
Cancer prevention
Auto insurance

There 4 examples are very rough and You might face more competition there, than in a cage of hungry lions. But You can increase Your chances to be successfull. Choose one of the above topics, then be more specific about it and finally add some region or Your hometown. Auto Insurance becomes Mercedes Auto Insurance North Carolina or Real Estate becomes Seaside real estate Spain. Basically You create a subniche. In other words, You are more specific about that niche, which has a number of advantages. Think of a reader who is looking for a lawyer in Toronto, Canada. A worldwide lawyer site is not what he needs, but that Toronto lawyer directory is definitvely helping him. Being specific will get You less readers, but those who stick with You absolutely like it.

I'm sure You got some ideas to think about for finding new topics to write about, or finding a whole untapped high paying niche. If You have an idea write it down, do some research about it and if You feel positive about the whole thing, just give it a try.

Running in the evening increases Your competitiveness

2009-04-24T04:18:00.000-07:00

I'm guilty. Guilty of not doing any sports... until recently. I can do anything using my computer, why would I go anywhere besides my computer (okay, this is exaggerated, but You get the point). Then comes the moment, when there is a blockade and You can't write anymore, can't think of a new topic and just don't want to make more marketing for Your blog. At this moment: Get some fresh air and do some sports to get new blogging energy. I'm not the only one who recommends this. Barack Obama himself started going to the gymn on a daily basis, since he moved to the White House. While the gymn is not really my thing, running is.

Have You ever been doing some endurance sport, like cycling or running? If YES, have You ever done some long distance, like running for more than 1 hour? When I started out running it was hard. Half an hour running was the most I could take. But when I return from a long run, then I'm on an emotional high. I did accomplish something not everyone can accomplish. This gives me new energy to reach new goals. Doing a run 2 or 3 times a week in the evening distinguishes me from Joe Average.

I recommend running to You, because I do it and it feels great, it helps to shake off the daily problems, but I guess any endurance sport will have the same effect. Choose what You like and start with it. Beginning this relaxing sport is similar to starting a blog. It's difficult in the beginning. I tended to read a lot of theory about it, but it took me long time to get startet. But in the end I was highly satisfied. You should give it a try as well and expect some new energy to get Your first blog going.

How many visitors do You have?

2009-04-23T03:55:00.001-07:00

Having a blog is nice, but You need to be in control of it. Therefore You need some statistical data about Your blog. Luckily there are some solutions out there to help You get this statistics job done: Google Analytics.

Google Analytics offers nice graphs to visualize the visitors to Your blog.

With Google Analytics You can answer questions like:

How many visitors do I have per day/week/month?
From which countries/cities do my readers come from?
How do they find my blog?
Through which keywords do I get a lot of readers?

So how do You get Google Analytics onto Your blog? Just go to http://analytics.google.com and sign up for an account. Once signed in, add a new website profile on the dashboard. Some code will be displayed to You which You have to add to You blog. Open Your blogger dashboard, go to Layout, click Edit HTML in the top bar and add the adsense code before the closing body-tag in the sourcecode, which is pretty much at the end of the file. You are ready to go tracking Your readers. It might take a day or 2 before You get the first results.

The first steps

2009-04-23T03:15:00.000-07:00

You have choosen a niche for Your blog, now You have to get it started. What are the first steps with a new blog to get it rolling? First of all, You need content. So pick up ~~pencil and paper~~ Your keyboard and get typing.

Write 20 posts before starting to promote

You might already thinking about promotion and advertising, but this is to early. First You need some articles on Your blog, otherwise visitors won't find any value on Your blog and just leave it. It's a good idea to have at least 20 posts, before starting to promote Your blog. You can write an post these first posts rapidly, publishing 2 or more posts a day, even if You want to adhere to a slower posting rate later on.

The introduction post

In Your first post, or introduction post, You can write some words about Yourself and also about the topic Your going to write about. Also write why You write about this topic, so people know that they can trust You. If You create a blog about photography, You definitely should write about Your photographing experience. An intro-post is not a must! If You want to maintain an unpersonalized blog, just jump into Your first regular post and skip the introduction. Both styles are valid. If You plan to sell Your blog later an unpersonalized style will definitely benefit You. Also consider, that You cannot sell a blog written on blogspot or wordpress, as it is against their TOS (Terms of Service), however we will look at other means to make money with our blog later.

Other posts to begin with

It shouldn't be a major problem to write posts in the first place, as You have choosen a niche You like. Should You ever run into trouble finding an idea for an article, here are some ideas:

What equipment is necessary in Your niche (photo camera for photography)
Oldschools vs. new developments (analog vs. digital camera)
Reviews of specific products (Canon EOS 300D)
The advantages to join Your hobby
Present some of Your work
Describe how You got into Your hobby and how others can do that as well
How to improve in Your field of expertise
100 signs, that You're a photographer (funny)
Comment and link to an article of another blogger in Your niche
Link to a Youtube Video, but don't do this to often, as this won't add much content to Your blog which search engines can use

Once You have about 10 blogposts, check if Your blog appears in the google searchengine. If it doesn't, simply add it here:
http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl

Also check out the neighbourhood. Are there other blogs in Your niche? What are these guys talking about? Maybe You want to add a few of them to Your blogroll?

Health, Wealth and Relationships

2009-04-22T02:24:00.001-07:00

Finding a profitable niche can be quite tiresome, although I recommended to not care about the best niche for beginning bloggers. Recently I was thinking about niches and I'd like to expand on the topic from a more general viewpoint.

Someone once told me the most profitable blogging niches ones are those that are a subgroup of the main human desires: Health, Wealth and Relationships. Is this true?

Let's look at health. Seems to be true. Pay per click costs are often extremely high in the health business. Some companies pay two-digit prices for a single click. Write about cancer, diets and how the environment affects the human body and see high paying clicks rolling in. On the other hand there are not that many people looking for health issues, because a lot of the population doesn't care about their own body. An attitude I strongly discourage.

The next thing is wealth. I have mixed feelings about this niche. On the one hand there are blogs to help their advice seeking readers to solve annoying legal issues. These are really high paying, on the other hand there is the whole evil make money online niche, where a single click is not particularly valuable. I guess, to get high paying clicks in this niche, You have to choose those areas where the big money is. That's legal advice to secure financial assets of the reader or insurances, to help the reader not lose his assets.

While fun gaming sites typically have advertisements with extremely low paying advertisements, it's quite different for online gambling. Although both are about gaming the latter involves money, therefore pays much higher. Bottom line is, wealth is a good niche, as long as a good amount of money is involved.

The final topic is relationships. Typical advertisers are Dating sites of all flavors. They per click rates are depressingly bad and hardly worth the effort. You only get paid if You create a sale with these guys, which is quite hard. I used online dating advertising for a while but it didn't work out for me. I want to give it another try in the future, because I do know some people do very well in the dating niche and earn ridiculous amounts of money, yet I have to find out how. As soon as I find out how, I'm gonna tell You.

So that's my assessment of health, wealth and relationships. If You have some comments, feel free to add them.

Your first niche

2009-04-22T02:01:00.000-07:00

With the decision to start blogging and giving the make money online idea a try, new questions arise. Some people worry about where to blog. If You are just starting Your first blog, stick to a free blogging platform, don't worry about hosting for now. Blogger or Wordpress are the two largest platforms for starting a free blog, and they are reliable and powerful as well. Face the truth: if You are working on Your first blog, there is a extremely high chance it won't be a blockbuster. You should rather see it as an experimentation lab and a free platform is perfect for such experiments.

Second comes the question of the niche to choose for Your first blog.

Don't worry about this as well. Your first blog will be a testbed for many things and after a while You will discover a lot of mistakes by Yourself. At some point You want to ditch Your first blog and get a new one anyways. So don't think to much about the most valuabel niche, rather choose something You like. Here are some ideas:

Nightlife guide for Your city
Gardening tips
Hiking
Marathon training guide
Programming in PHP blog

If You choose something You like a lot as Your first niche, then You won't run out of material to write about. This is especially important, as content is the key to get new readers to Your blog. With a new article every few days You can focus on other things than thinking about "what to write". We're going to cover things like getting backlinks and marketing soon.

When You are working on Your first blog, You should experiment, try out new thing. Things other people discourage You to do. You will learn what works and what doesn't. After a while You might look back and think "Damn, I made so many mistakes with this blog, I want to start a new blog!"

Ask Yourself: How good are my writing skills? Do I know how to make my blog popular? If You can answer these and similar questions with a clear YES, then You probably don't need to think about Your first niche. You're already experienced in blogging. Otherwise Your first blog and first niche are there to just learn these things. So it doesn't matter which is Your first niche. As I said in my previous blog post: Just start a new blog now and write Your first post.

Conclusion: Don't worry to much about the correct niche for Your first blog. Just choose something You like and go.

Welcome to Blogginggems

2009-04-21T06:20:00.000-07:00

Blogging is the famous make money online evergreen and I have to admit, I got caught in it as well. I have written a few blogs with a little success and here I want to share my findings. They are not the best You'll ever encounter, but I do want to show You what has helped me to make money online with blogging.

My name is Hendrik and I'm a computer science student, residing in Germany. Before I got into the idea of blogging I did some php programming, but soon realised, that with the wordpress plattform everything anyone ever needs is already there. Why reinvent the blogging wheel? The real hard part ist getting started, having ideas and make them work through various means.

As I believe every single post in a blog should have at least some use, I want to share my first piece of advice, which is also the best piece of advice You'll ever find on this blog: Get Started Blogging! (I'm going to repeat that one later again) It took me quite a while to realize, that reading masses of theory won't get me anywhere, unless I start blogging. And You should start, too. Sign up with blogger und create Your first blog, it's easy.

See You soon with more gemlike ideas on blogging.