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Best posts on Niche Blogger Today from Mar 2009

Posted by admin
at April 1, 2009
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Too many posts to handle? If you missed out on a great post from last month, here’s a quick digest of the top posts that you may want to check out:
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Reader Question: How Can I Better Monetize my Established Blog?

Posted by Jonathan
at March 26, 2009
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This is the first post in an ongoing series of reader questions. I’m more than happy to answer reader questions (well, attempt to as least). So feel free to contact me and I’ll be happy to try and help!

This week’s question comes from Clive who runs an established blog called Fan Cinema Today.

Clive’s Question:

I’ve run a niche blog, fancinematoday.com, for two years now, posting daily for the last year, but I only got serious about taking it to the next step about 2 months ago, when I took it to a self-hosted format. I’ve been working it pretty hard and have gotten to about 10,000 visitors a month according to WordPress’ own stats plugin (but far more, more according to CyStats, a WordPress analytics solution not mentioned in your write-up today). I *think* I’m making progress, but for all I know, this is miniscule even for a niche blog.

My question, then, is how much traffic do I need before I can go after advertising? Google AdSense isn’t working for me at all–in two months, I’ve earned a whopping $1.06–so I need to find something else. What are some other advertising outfits besides Google? How did you get the banner ads on your site?

Insight on any of these would be a huge help.
Thanks,
Clive

Clive asked some great questions and below is my response:

Hi Clive:

Thanks for writing! That’s a fantastic question! You’ve got fantastic traffic numbers so there is no reason why your blog couldn’t earn more. Here’s what I’d suggest after taking a look at your site.

1. Better Google Ads Placement

Your Google ads aren’t earning because they are in a bad spot. Your ad blocks need to be where people’s eyeballs are, and that not at the bottom of the right sidebar. First, I would recommend putting a 468×60 half-banner at the bottom of every post. Next I would put a 120×600 skyscraper ad unit in the left sidebar, at the top above everything else. And then, on your longer posts I would put a 468×60 half-banner in the middle of longer posts (keep the code handy in a text file or something or use Easy Adsenser). That will help improve your ad conversions.

2. Affiliate Marketing

There’s a lot of money in affiliate marketing. Join a network like Commission Junction (http://www.cj.com) where you’ll get paid a commission when someone clicks an ad and makes a purchase. With your traffic numbers, there’s no reason why this couldn’t pay. Joining is easy and all you need to do is find advertisers related to your niche. Linkshare.com is also a good affiliate program.

3. Direct Sales

This is a harder approach, but contact potential advertisers directly and pitch your site and readers. 10,000 Visitors a month may not impress them, but what are your actual pageviews? If they are far larger, those are the number advertisers are interested in. Look who is showing up in the Adsense ads and approach them directly.

4. Empty Ad Slots

Put up some 125×125 ads slots that say ‘advertise here’ and have them link to a contact form. You’d be surprised who will contact you. Also, it’s a great idea to set up an Advertising page where you summarize the size, it’s audience, traffic and back it up with hard stats. Potential advertiser’s will love that.

5. Bartering

The banner ad on my site, Anglotopia.net was acquired from a bartering arrangement with the advertiser. It’s worked out well. I got something I couldn’t justify paying for and he got great exposure.

Right now, you’re best bet is to maximize Google Adsense. Once your traffic grows even more, you’ll earn more.

What do you guys think? How can Clive better monetize his established blog?

Advertising, Reader Questions, Tool Tips
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Wordpress Wednesday: Free Wordpress Analytics Solutions

Posted by Jonathan
at March 25, 2009
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The second most important part of Niche Blogging, after content, is keeping track of everything. You need detailed analytics to understand who your readers are, what they’re reading and what is most popular content you’re creating.

There are many options out there for using Analytics on your Wordpress blog. Which one you choose will become an invaluable tool in your niche blogging toolbox, so it’s important to choose wisely.

Here are some great analytics free solutions for Wordpress:

Google Analtyics

Google Analytics is by far the most popular free analytics solution for many websites, including blogs. It’s the most feature rich package out there and it doesn’t cost a dime. It’s easy to implement on a Wordpress blog, especially with easy to use plugins.

It’s provides a great snapshot of your traffic based on daily, weekly and monthly trends. It tells you how many visitors you’ve had, where they’re coming from and how they’re finding you. It also has an e-commerce package that will allow you to track sales of products.

There is a downside to Google Analytics, however. It doesn’t catch everything. GA uses a script to track visitors and many visitors may have scripts blocked. This means that GA is only good for trend reporting because it’s numbers will always be slightly off.

Google Analytics

Piwik

Piwik is a free and open source solution that’s looking to supplant Google Analytics. It works much the same way as GA except that instead of relying on a free web service, you run Piwik on your own servers. All it needs is a SQL database and it’s tracking code installed on your website.

This means that your analytics solution will be as reliable as your webhost. It tracks a lot of the same data that GA tracks. It’s still relatively new to the analytics field so it’s not as feature rich and ‘pretty’ as Google Analytics. But it’s highly customizable, robust and has a great future. It’s worth checking out.

Piwik Analytics

Statpress

Statpress is a free Wordpress plugin that provides real time Analytics within your Wordpress dashboard. One of the downsides of Google Analytics is that it’s results are delayed by a day, so if there is a problem or a big spike in traffic, you won’t know about it until the next day. Statpress will give you up to the minute details of who’s coming to your site.

Another great thing about it is that it catches EVERYTHING, it catches a lot more hits than GA. It will also catch bots abusing your server, something GA does not track at all. This means you can spot people stealing your bandwidth, stealing your content or trying to spam your blog.

The downside of Statpress is that it catches everything and it’s difficult to parse the massive amount of data in a readable way. Some of the graphs and stats don’t really make sense and that hasn’t changed for a while.

The Statpress plugin is free and a must have for any Wordpress blog.

Download Statpress Wordpress Plugin.

Yahoo Analytics

Yahoo recently threw it’s hat into the Analytics realm with it’s own free product to battle with Google Analtyics. I haven’t had a chance to use it myself, but from what I understand it’s not as feature rich as Google Analytics and lacks in a lot of ways.

It’s still early days in it’s development though, so I expect Yahoo Analtytics to become more a competitor in the future as it’s developed.

Yahoo Analytics

Which is Best for You?

If you want to roll your own Analtyics solution, then Piwik is the choice for you.

I can only give advice based on my own experience and my solution is a combination of Google Analytics and Statpress. Google Analytics provides beautifully presented trend reporting and Statpress gives you a nuts and bolts view of what’s going on with your traffic. Both are important to have and that’s what I would recommend to anyone starting a niche blog.

What’s your Favorite Free Analytics Software?

Wordpress Wednesday
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Theme Tuesday: Mimbo Magazine Theme

Posted by Jonathan
at March 24, 2009
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mimbo3.png

Mimbo Theme is a pretty slick Magazine Style 3 columned theme. It’s well designed and well programmed. I’m using on one of my blogs, Austerity Blog and it’s worked out very well. It’s easy to place ads, your readers have easy access to more of your content and it integrates thumbnail images nicely. I’m probably going to start using it more of some of my other sites. It’s a very well put together theme and best of all, it’s free.

Check out it out Live on Austerity Blog

View Live Mimbo Demo here.

Download Mimbo Theme here.

Theme Tuesday
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Drupal Tips Monday: Install Drupal the Easy Way

Posted by Jonathan
at March 23, 2009
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ubercart.jpeg

If you’re new to Drupal, simply installing it can be an intimidating proposition. Especially if you don’t know your SQL server from your FTP. If you don’t want to mess about doing all the hard work of installing a basic installation of Drupal, then let someone else do it for you.

This tool is not very well known, but it’s invaluable. It’s the Ubercart installer. Ubercart is a module for Drupal that turns Drupal into a full fledged e-commerce solution. To make it easier to install for potential users, they have an installer on their website. An installer which can also install a regular installation of Drupal without Ubercart included.

All you have to do is enter all the relevant information when prompted and the Ubercart Installer will do all the Drupal install work for you. It works like a charm and it works quickly every time.

Also, Ubercart is a fantastic little package and I highly recommend it if you want to set up an e-commerce site without a lot of capital outlay. Ubercart is the perfect open source shopping cart solution. It’s now possible to set up a full featured e-commerce website and shopping card with free, open-source software. Brilliant.

Check out the Ubercart installer here.

Drupal Monday
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Drupal Tips Monday: When to use Drupal?

Posted by Jonathan
at March 12, 2009
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I get this question a lot: When should you use Drupal over other content management systems such as Wordpress?

The only easy answer is: it depends.

To understand why, let’s explore a few things about Wordpress and Drupal.

Wordpress

Wordpress is a fantastically flexible blogging platform. It looks great, has a strong backend and is very easy to use.

Wordpress can be hacked into becoming a Content Management system, but it’s not the way it’s designed out of the box.

Drupal

Drupal is a powerful full fledged content management system that can manage many different types of content, not just blog content

While Drupal has a blog module built in, it’s not solely designed to operate at a blog. It’s built to manage many different types of content.

What are you going to do?

If you’re goal is to simply run a blog, then Wordpress is by far the best option for that. You can use Drupal to run your blog, but it has a harder learning curve.

If you are going to grow beyond a simple blog and create a community around your niche blog that will have different types of content then I would recommend taking the time to learn and use Drupal.

You will save yourself many headaches in the end.

Drupal Monday
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Theme Tuesday: Corporate Theme from StudioPress

Posted by Jonathan
at March 10, 2009
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corporate-theme.jpeg

There is now a great new Corporate Theme solution from hit premium theme company, StudioPress. It replaces their Office theme that used to be a hallmark of the RevolutionTwo theme line.

This theme is ten times better and more full featured. It features many ways for you to display your company’s content. It features that fantastic Flash featured content widget, as well as great ways to integrate videos, blogs and social media in your corporation’s new website.

It’s a two-column theme that is very well laid out. Two-columns is perfect for company’s looking to display as much information about their products and services as possible. You can also customize the colors and the way content is displayed.

Personally, I love StudioPress themes. I’m using them on a couple websites and they are easy to use, very powerful and well designed. This theme is also very reasonably priced at $59.95. Very worth it when you think about how much business you bring in through your website.

I am definitely going to recommend the StudioPress Corporate Theme to my clients when developing websites.

Check out a Demo of the Corporate Theme Here

Buy the Corporate Theme Here

Theme Tuesday
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Drupal Tips Monday - Moderating Content

Posted by Jonathan
at March 9, 2009
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I run a couple Drupal websites that rely on user submissions to fill the site with content. As spammers discovered the site though, it became clear that I was going to have to moderate all incoming posts so that garbage didn’t get automatically posted.

I also like to control when content gets published so that it goes across all the RSS and Twitter feeds at just the right times, when the most people would be able to see it.

Drupal used to have a moderation function built into it’s core. But it was phased out and now we need to rely on a plugin to moderate content.

That plugin is called Modr8 and all it does it put all content that you specify into a submission queue. All from one window you can decide whether to delete something, publish it or leave it in the queue.

You can also send users reasons why their post was denied as well as a confirmation message that their posts were accepted.

It’ a very useful plugin. It does one thing and it does it well.

Download Modr8 here

How Do You Manage User Submitted Content with Drupal?

Drupal Monday
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Niche Blogging 101 Series: How to Research Your Niche

Posted by Jonathan
at March 6, 2009
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This is part three in an ongoing series about how to start your own Niche Blog. To read the rest of the posts, check out the Niche Blogging 101 page.

Last week we covered the topic of how to find a niche for you to blog about. This week we’re going to discuss researching that niche and finding out whether or not it’s worth your time.

First Step: Google It

This is the easiest step, first you need to find people already writing about the same subject. This will help you decide whether or not to even pick the topic. If someone else is already doing a great job covering a niche, then why try to compete? However, if you think you can do it better then you can learn everything you need to from their blog.

When you’re looking at competitor blogs, explore the content. What kind of posts do they write? What kind of layout/theme have they chosen? Do they have a regular series? Does it look like there a content plan or if they person is just blogging about whatever, whenever they feel like it?

Most of all, the most important thing to find out is if the blog has been updated recently.

Keep track of all the similar blogs that you find. When you start marketing your blog, you’ll need to engage them and use them to build traffic.

For example, for Anglotopia I sought out other Anglophile bloggers. Many were covering the subject well and were more than happy to link to each other. It gave me an idea of how to do my blog differently and what kind of content I would cover. Some of them have even become columnists on Anlglotopia! So, don’t automatically think of the competition as the enemy. They could end up helping you greatly.

Next Step: Keyword Research

When browsing competitors, take a look as what keyword they’re targeting. I work in SEO, so I’m always thinking about things from a Search Engine Optimization perspective.

The most important thing is to find out how people are finding your fellow bloggers. What keywords find the most blogs? Is there strong competition? What keywords can draw the most traffic that will help your future monetization efforts?

One free way to do some keyword research is to use the Google Adwords tool, it will suggest other keywords and rate how competitive the term is. It’s an excellent resource.

Start building a list of keywords that you’re going to target. You’ll need these keywords when you build your meta-data, you’ll need it when marketing your site on blog networks and you’ll need it always in the back of your head when you’re writing content.

Third Step: Brainstorming

When you’re excited about launching a new blog, the ideas are flowing. Especially when you see what competitors are up and what keywords are strong. It’s important to write down all these ideas. You’ll need them when you build your niche blog content plan.

Keep a text editor open and jot down ideas as you get them. Organize them in a way that will help you get to them quickly. I use the program called Evernote to keep track of all my ideas and draft posts. I highly recommend it.

Final Step: Naming

Once you’ve got an idea of what you’re blog is going to be, it’s time to come up with a name. Something catchy that will be easy to remember, but keep in mind, your blog name will depend very highly on what domain names are available.

So, come up with a list of possible names then use a safe domain checker to see if the domain is taken. If not, then buy it immediately before someone else does.

Once you have a name, you can figure out how your blog will look and what content you’ll fill it with. You’ll begin to see it in your head, it will become tangible.

Now that your blog is beginning to take some shape, it’s time to prepare for the next step: deciding on a platform and beginning the niche blog development process.

Check back next week for the next part in the Niche Blogging 101 Series.

Niche Blogging 101
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Technical Thursday: Creating a Simple Photo Gallery

Posted by Jonathan
at March 5, 2009
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gallery.jpeg

This week’s Technical Thursday post comes via another blog post I found about how to automatically generate a photo gallery from a directory of images.

The tutorial guides you through all the processes you need to create the gallery and it also includes the files. Learning how to do this is a great springboard into developing your own way to sell your pictures directly on your website.

From the article:

Creating a Photo Gallery isn’t such a hard task. My favorite way to present photos is simply a grid of thumbnails that people may pick and choose from as they see ones that interest them. Clicking on a thumbnail brings up a larger version. Could be a direct link to the larger photo or something fancier like a modal box. If you are creating a fairly small gallery, hand coding this grid of thumbnails is probably fine, but if you are creating a fairly large gallery or you anticipate doing a lot of adding/editing/swapping of photos, you may want to consider a better solution. And that solution is…. An automatically generating photo gallery!

When I say “Auto Generating”, I don’t mean that that it takes the pictures for you. This gallery won’t even create the thumbnails for you. What it DOES, is build itself dynamically from your directory of images. So when you want to add new photos, you simply drop the new photo and thumbnail in the directory and you are done! Removing photos just means removing the photos from the image directory. We use PHP for this web wizardry.

Check out a Demo of it here.

Read the whole Tutorial on Creating a Photo Gallery here.

Technical Thursday
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