It must be time to do another question and answer session.
Yep, Monday night – May 19 – at 8pm.
Mark your calendars.
Of course ike always you can ask your questions in advance. Go to the page and fill in your question then stop back on Monday night to hear the answers.
I’ve heard that you can change a WordPress blog into a website. How? please
Technically a blog is a website. Just one that uses a CMS (Content Management System) as a backbone. It would be the same thing if you were using Joomla, PHP Nuke or many other CMS solutions.
The key in making a blog look like a “website” is selecting the theme. The software already allows you to set a static home page. (Log in to your dashboard – click settings – reading and you will see the options for a static front page and can set it page to show singly.) All you would need to do would be find a theme that is limited.
By limited I mean with only one sidebar and that you set up the widgets on that sidebar to only include a few limited items like categories, links etc. so it looks like a website.
The other item would be to go into the code and remove the comments. Even if you turn off comments most themes will display a commnets closed display. This is only if you don’t want people to have any idea you are using WordPress.
The problem with that is you just closed off one of the most powerful features of a blog – user generated content.
There are also some paid themes that have already done this for you. Semiologic has one that is really easy to point and click your way to a website look.
Probably my big question would be why you would want to do this and limit what the blog can do for you?
I basically use blogs for most of my sites unless it is a sales site or lead generation site. Then I put up a 3 -6 page minisite that has only the one purpose. (Quite often if I have a blog attached – most of the time – I use the squeeze page to also send blog updates. If you use Aweber you can automate that.)
Hope that answers your question and as always your comments and questions are welcomed.
This is probably the single most asked questions although not always worded this way.
First a blog is not a big red button that you put it up and voila you get cash. Sorry
It can be an excellent way to generate traffic. Find good keywords, create some quality content, set up your plugins properly, add a good ping list and take the time to do some one time work (I know a bad word again) and you can get good targeted traffic.
That in a nutshell is what a blog is good for. Now the money making depends on what YOU do with that traffic. How do you convert it to something that gets you paid?
Here are a few things you can do but it will depend on your offer as to how well it works.
Use contextual advertising (ie Adsense, Konterra, etc.)
Add paid banners or links
Collect email addresses
Create authority for you (become the expert or expert gate keeper)
Presell affiliate products
Lets look at a couple of these. The easiest is Adsense because if you have picked good high paying keywords, done the proper research you don’t have to worry about the offer just the click.
Now you do need to understand the rules, set up the proper ad blocks and test different ones but once you get the click you get paid. This does take good traffic volume so that is the hardest part but a properly set up blog will make it easier than a normal website.
Paid banners or links will take the effort to get your blog a high PR. Most of the banner services and paid linking services want a PR4 or higher. Building good back links will be the key here. Once it is there this may be the easiest of all to maintain.
Collecting email addresses or using CPA (cost per action) offers can be another effective way. The profitability will depend on how well your back end (the email series) converts or how well the CPA offer converts. Unlike contextual ads you only get paid when people complete an action.
Creating authority works very well with a blog but has no value if you don’t have offers for the back end. (Example – I write and build credibility about WordPress but I have a variety of products about that topic to monetize the authority built indirectly.)
Preslling affiliate products can be the most profitable way to use a blog but..
Again it depends on how well you write the presell and how well the actual sales letter converts. When done right though it works well.
In conclusion a blog can get you lots of TARGETED traffic but you do need to know what to do with it to turn that traffic into money. The better you are at that the more profitable your blog will be. All the traffic in the world is worthless if you don’t have a solid way to monetize it.
As always your questions and comments are welcomed.
How often should one post articles on a business blog?
This is a question with no real answer. You can be very effective posting once a week, once a month or once a day. It depends on a lot of factors.
The more you post the better is generally true. I try to post 3-5 times a week generally on most of my blogs.
The answer realy lies in what you are using the blog to accomplish.
Now I have one that we just do a weekly podcast on that does well at Amplification Marketing. Once a week works well for that one.
Over the past few years some of the blogs I have that were created to support various programs of mine also work well on a weekly update basis.
The key there is that those have a data base that can be advised when the updates are posted. They are used primarily to keep people already involved up to date with what is happening. It is for relationship building with an existing list. Any search engine benefit is a plus but not the primary purpose of the blog.
When you are looking for search engine traffic primarily, the more often you post the better. Caveat – You need to be posting properly and targeting very specific keywords for this to be most effective. (You can listen to the lesson I did on this at niche research or in the post earlier in this blog on profitable blogging.)
The real key is understanding what you are trying to accomplish with your blog and setting a regular schedule. Any of them will work but posting 4 days then skipping a month would not be as effective as posting once a week. Regularity is the key because your readers will come to expect that schedule.
As always your comments and questions are welcomed.
I am a member of myccblog and I have my own website in the same niche. How do I attach this blog to my website, and how do I let people know, in the proper way, to go from the website to the blog or from the blog to the website. Also, is this more beneficial to my rank or should they stay separate. Thanks your all you help, I really appreciate all that you are doing for your readers.
You can’t attach the blog to your website as they are on different domains.
The question I have is where is your profitable action?
For example if you are collecting email addresses through a squeeze page on your web site you will want to be linking to that from your blog. If you are selling a product or service you would link to that. (I do recommend collecting the email address first ). Use good anchor text for the links and use a variety of different anchor texts and calls to action.
Lets go a bit deeper and use an example. Because the blog has the rss feed and the ability to ping automatically we will use this as a content and traffic source to send QUALIFIED visitors to the money site.
First you need to have a keyword list that you want to rank for and that are achievable. (This is discussed in the free lesson available at WordPress Lessons.) For this example I am looking for car dealers that are using web services like cars.com to advertise their inventory.
I write an article about a topic of interest to car dealers on my blog and add a signature file to my blog post that links to my squeeze page. I can also use an in post link if it is something that would be of interest to my readers. If I have targeted an achievable keyword I can rank for that topic and it would be of interest to my target market. That draws traffic and the link or signature file sends traffic to the site that actually monetizes.
If you look closely at this blog post I have done just that. While answering your question I was able to link out to my coaching site and at the same time give you quality information if you decide to sign up through the opt in form there for the free lesson.
To summarize I usually use the blog to draw in and qualify those that will be interested in my offers. It is much easier to get the blog to rank highly in the serps so they get more traffic. There I can start the relationship and qualification before sending them to the places that will be my ultimate monetization. The other thing is thta iof you are using multiple formats to draw in people (like Squidoo, Hub Pages, free blogs, Yahoo Answers, etc) you can generate multiple links from a variety of sources toward your money page which will lift that in the serps too.
As always your comments and questions are welcomed.
You can call in or listen from the web. Full details below.
EVENT: Profitable Blogging – Step One
DATE & TIME: Saturday, April 19th at 2:00pm Eastern
FORMAT: Simulcast! (Attend via Phone or Webcast — it’s your choice) TO ATTEND THIS EVENT, CLICK THIS LINK NOW…
Please make sure to download and print out the notesheet prior to the class.
One of the biggest questions I get is how to create a profitable blog so I will be doing a series of blog posts on just this from Monday through Friday.
I will then be doing a free teleseminar on Saturday to go into detail on the first step. This is probably the part that most get wrong or skip all together.
So you want to make sure that you are checking here regularly next week.
In the mean time I put up a video about tweaking your blog. This shows you how quickly you can change the look of your theme if you have the proper instruction.
). Use good anchor text for the links and use a variety of different anchor texts and calls to action.
