Are You a Poor Blogger? Here’s How Your Blog Can Make You Richer !

Guest Post - Our host is Efoghor Joseph Ezie, In this post he looks at how many Bloggers are struggling to monetize their blogs and provides some tips to help.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

You can be considered a poor blogger if you’ve been in blogging business for over six months and you cannot make at least a hundred dollars per month. If you have been investing your time, money and intellect into your business and your AdSense account is still in the reds, then you don’t have a success story.

How about having been on the Net for over two years and your Google AdSense account is no where near $50? Your guest is as good as mine. Blogging is supposed to be a full time business to a lot of people who are doing it; and when for months and years no tangible income comes into your pocket you are a poor blogger.

I know some would like to criticize me by saying that blogging success is not only measured by the amount of money one gets. They may want to excuse themselves by saying that success could be measured in terms of the number of people who have benefited directly or indirectly from your content.

But providing quality content and making others happy but you end up a debtor, with no money to renew your Internet subscription, pay your domain and hosting renewals and even feed yourself still does not translate to a success story.

If you are still in the categories mentioned above, here are a few things you could do to change you story:
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How To Add Your BuySellAds Marketplace Page To Your Blog

BuySellAds.Com (BSA) is by far the most popular direct advertising site for Bloggers.Recently BuySellAds updated the site to version 3 introducing not only a fresh new design but also some new options for Publishers.One of these options is to place your Marketplace page on your actual blog.The Marketplace page is the page people are directed to on BuySellAds when they click the Advertise Here banners on your site, the page displaying your available ad spots and stats.

BSA call this option the Ad Sales Widget "..Show your ad availability and pricing right on your website. Most publishers use this as their entire "Advertise" page for their website.."

You can see a demo of the Ad Sales Widget for Spice Up Your Blog Here.

If your not yet a user of BSA or have had trouble getting approved take a look at out post "BuySellAds.Com Review And Interview With Founder Todd Garland"

Add The BuySellAds Ad Widget To Your Blog

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Make Money On Blogger With Google Affiliate Ads

Blogger have introduced a new way to make money with your blog.Google Affiliate Ads can be easily added to your posts to display links and image ads connected to your content.The ads run through your AdSense account, payments will be added to your AdSense account so of course you will need an AdSense account to run the Affiliate ads.The ads can be easily added via the post settings in your Blogger Post Editor.Importantly Google Affiliate ads are only available to Bloggers in the USA.The Blogger team put together the video below to explain how it works.
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How To Add Colorful Css Animations To BuySellAds Banners

I'm sure you will all have noticed the effect i have added to the BuySellAds.Com ad banners on this blog.I think the effect is awesome and brings more attention to the ads which keep our advertisers happy.The first time i seen this type of effect was on the awesome Css Tricks by Chris Coyier.With the help Of Harish from Custom Blogger Templates and Way2Blogging i managed to get a version for this blog.I have had many requests for the code in the past but as the idea was originally from Chris i was slow to share it.However as Css Tricks no longer use the effect and i have seen it used on lots of other blogs which i presumed viewed the source of this blog to copy the code I think it's the right time to do a tutorial.The effect is created using only Css.

Remember this is set up to work only with ads and Advertise Here banners from BuySellAds.Com.For the 125x125 banners your sidebar will need to be at least 300px wide.Wordpress and other users can add the Css from the scroll box below to their style sheet , below i have a Blogger tutorial.
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The 7 Top Tips Direct From AdSense To Earn More From Your Blog

A few weeks ago i told you how i managed to get my mistakenly closed AdSense account reopened.In that post i mentioned how, ironic as it seemed at the time while my AdSense account was closed i received a booklet from Google AdSense with some tips to increase earnings.The booklet had some general tips and some specific tips for Spice Up Your Blog.I know AdSense don't send these booklets to everyone so in this post i will share the tips AdSense gave.Apart from the tips specifically for my sites there was 7 general tips that i think can help everyone make more money with AdSense.
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BuySellAds.Com Review And Interview With Founder Todd Garland

In this post we will look at BuySellAds.Com (BSA), a site that makes selling direct advertising on your blog quick and easy while leaving you in control.I also have a short interview with Founder and CEO Todd Garland, Todd took the time to answer a few questions i thought would relate directly to Spice Up Your Blog readers.

BSA was created with the intention of taking the pain out of buying and selling ads, a process that otherwise is time consuming and frustrating.They also display your blog to potential advertisers you otherwise would not be able to attract, advertisers can find your blog in the BSA directory when searching for suitable publishers.

So lets first take a run through the process.

Quick Overview Of BuySellAds.Com

1. Submit your blog - BSA review all blogs before they can join the programme.Your blog must be established, have unique content and a healthy number of monthly impressions.

2. Create Your Ad Zones - Once accepted you can log in and create some zones for ads, Popular zones are the header and sidebar.The main script must be added first then you are provided with code for the actual area the ads appear - Create An Ad Zone Tutorial.

3. Advertise Here - Once you have the ad code in the zones the grey "Advertise Here" banner will appear.Visitors to your blog can click on the banner to view your directory page and purchase ads.

4. Ad Sold - As soon as an advertiser buys an ad the Advertise Here banner will automatically be replaced with their ad.

5. Cash Out - You can request a cash out via Paypal, Cheque or wire transfer once you have $50 Now $20 in your account.

6. Our Fancy Colorful Effects On Banners - You may have noticed the cool effect we use on the BuySellAds banners.Find out how to create it on your blog here : Buysellads.com banner ad effect tutorial.

Remember you are in control of the ad spots you make available, the price you charge and you can change your settings so you have to pre-approve any ads before they are displayed.You can get a full list of help articles from installing the ad zones to getting paid here - BuySellAds Help

Interview With BSA Founder Todd Garland

I asked the BSA Founder and CEO a few questions, here is what he had to say.

Spice Up Your Blog - I notice most of the sites selling ads on BuySellAds are in the Technology And Web Design Niche.First, do you accept sites from all niches and have you advertisers looking to advertise on other niches ?

Todd Garland - Yes, we accept sites form all niches, from cupcakes, to weddings, to motorcycle blogs and more. We are much stronger in the tech than other verticals, but we’re always working to increase activity for both advertisers and publishers across many verticals outside of tech.

SUYB - As most of my readers are Blogger users have you a policy when it comes to accepting blogs using the Blogger Sub Domain (Blogspot) ? I hear blogs using the sub domain are less likely to be accepted.

TG - That is correct. In our experience, .blogger sites tend to have lower traffic than is required to sell ads directly to advertisers with a system like BSA. Sure, there are edge cases and this does not apply to all .blogger sites.

SUYB - Are the links in the Ads Do-Follow ?

TG - We don’t specify. The ads are served us using JavaScript and we do not sell them with the intent of the ads passing any SEO value.

SUYB - Apart from Impressions what do you think is a sites main selling point (Alexa Rank, Page Rank, Followers, Fans etc..) ?

TG - I think it’s the quality of content on their site and the number of existing advertisers they have.

SUYB - What tips if any would you give to users to help sell more ads ?

TG - Write the best content you can write, hustle, and grow your community.

Sponsored Tweets

At the time of writing BuySellAds.Com have just launched a new feature called Sponsored Tweets.As the name suggests advertisers can "Buy A Tweet" on your Twitter account.For more information check out the BSA Blog Post On Sponsored Tweets.

You can view the Spice Up Your Blog listing on BuySellAds.Com or Submit Your Blog to BuySellAds.Com and start selling ads today.

Drop Your Comments, Views And Questions Below.

Why Alexa Rank Is Important How To Increase Your Blogs Alexa Rank

Alexa has been around for 14 years checking and ranking the traffic levels for every site online.Alexa use toolbars installed on millions of users browsers to track the hits sites are getting.Every time someone with the Alexa Toolbar installed lands on your Blog it increases your Ranking.That's all interesting and it's fun to check out the top 10 sites online or the top 100 in your country but why is it important to have a high Alexa Rank and what can you do to improve your blogs Alexa rank ?

Why Alexa Rank Is important

The major advantage of a high Alexa rank comes into play when you look to sell ad spots on your blog.Ad Networks and Advertisers take Alexa rank very seriously when it comes to buying advertising on your site.Webmasters and Blogger also take Alex rank into consideration when it comes to linking to your site, exchanging links, submitting posts and connecting in other ways with you.Even if you don't currently sell direct Advertising on your Blog you will more than likely want to in the future so working on improving your rank now will be of great benefit.

How To Increase Your Alexa Rank

When i researched for this post i found lots of articles with huge lists of Alexa Tips And Tricks.However as i looked deeper and even in the comments for these posts a lot of these tips were shown to be bull....The first ting to do and a guaranteed way to increase your Blogs Alexa rank is Install the toolbar.

Install The Alexa Toolbar

Chances are nobody visits your blog more than you, once you install the toolbar all those visits will be ranked on Alexa.The toolbar is quiet compact and on the Chrome browser you wouldn't even know it's there.Once installed it's actually quiet interesting to have an instant ranking on every site you visit - Get the Alexa Toolbar here.

Make Your Blog Your Homepage

Once you install the toolbar set your blog to your homepage to ensure even more hits.If your family or friends didn't mind you could install the toolbar on their browser and set your blog to the homepage also.

Write A Post About Alexa

By writing a post about Alexa you may convince some of your regular readers to install the toolbar.Now when they visit your blog it's helping your blogs rank.

Others - Most of the people using the Alexa Toolbar are experienced Internet users,Webmasters and fellow Bloggers, Submit your blog to Digg, Stumble, Design Float, Reddit and other bookmarking sites these guys hang out.It's suggested adding the Alexa gadget to your blog will help but i have seen this refuted.It's suggested getting people to write a review of your blog will help, i have also seen this refuted.

That's it, Since i installed the Alexa Toolbar only 2 weeks ago i have seen Spice Up Your Blog climb from over 110,000 to under 95,000.You can find many more Blogging Resources Here, If you have any tips you think are worth considering let us know.

Drop Your Comments And Questions Below.

Should You Use Traffic Exchanges To Promote Your Blog ?

I recently received an Email from a reader telling me they were using traffic exchanges to get new readers to their blog.In the Email they went on to say most of their traffic came from traffic exchanges so they felt it was quiet successful.Having previously been involved in affiliate marketing and having run a very successful blog on affiliate marketing I'm very familiar with traffic exchanges.

Traffic exchanges are one of the top forms of promotion for affiliate marketers so i have seen the pros and cons involved.In this post i will give you a brief outline of the pros and cons but before you even consider using a traffic exchange their is one major factor that you must recognise.If you use AdSense on your blog using traffic exchanges will get you banned, The use of any traffic exchange is strictly banned by AdSense.



What Are Traffic Exchanges ?

The idea behind a traffic exchange is quiet clever at first look.You open an account with a traffic exchange website like Traffic Swarm and submit the URL address of your blog with a short description.Now you click a Surf Websites button.Once you click the button you are brought to a website which you must stay on for 15 seconds, after the 15 seconds you click Surf Websites and go to another website for 15 seconds and so on...

Lets say for example you surf through 20 websites, then 20 other people who log on just like you did will go to your website for 15 seconds.This is all controlled by a credits system, when you visit another site you earn credits and when another user visits your site you loose credits.

Pros And Cons

I hope i got the idea of how it works across and it does look foolproof but like everything there is more than meets the eye.

*You can not use AdSense on your blog if you use traffic exchanges
*Most traffic exchange surfers open the traffic exchange in a new window so don't even look at the sites they are surfing
*You are not getting a target audience - Most of the traffic will not be interested in your blogs subject
*Premium members are given extreme preference - Premium members who pay a monthly fee get free credits and the best traffic with a longer timer
*The traffic is not real - The traffic you receive is only on your blog to get credits.The rate of return visitors will be almost zero with the time spent on your blog rarely passing the 15 seconds.
*As you can be sent to any website there is a danger of being sent to a website that could infect your computer.

As you can see i am totally against the use of traffic exchanges and not trying to hide it.I had some success with them when they were new and exciting but they have run their course.You will get traffic but it will be useless traffic and you will have to waste hours building credits, time that could be spent improving your blog or working on S.E.O. and other blog promotion methods.

What Are The Options

If you would like to check out some of the traffic exchange sites here are a few of the most popular.
(Note you can build credits from affiliate links - These are NOT affiliate links)

Traffic Swarm
Smiley Traffic
EasyHits4u

Remember you can get all these tips sent directly to your email and stay a step ahead.Its a quick and easy service Provided for Free by Google.Just fill in the Email form below the post.If you need extra help on this or any tutorial just leave a comment, I love comments and feedback so this Blog is Do-Follow - when you comment here it helps Your Blogs Google rank !

This was probably not the most fair post i have published as it's very one sided.But blogging is about opinions and in my opinion using traffic exchanges to promote your blog is an absolute waste of time.They can still have limited success for affiliate marketing but even that is diminishing.

Do you use traffic exchanges ?

Have you a different opinion on traffic exchanges ?

Do you want more info on the subject ?

Let Us Know...

What Other Ads Can Be Used With AdSense On Your Blog

For bloggers AdSense is the main option when it comes to making money from blogs.In fact AdSense is the only option when it comes to target advertising on your blog.There are two reasons behind this, first under the AdSense terms and conditions (T.O.S.) you may only use one target advertising service on your blog or website.By target advertising what is meant is an Advertiser like AdSense that crawl your blogs content and deliver Ads based on the content of each page.The second reason AdSense is the only option for target advertising is the competition is at best poor.You can only use one so the smart money is on AdSense and not a competitor like Bidvertiser.



Note : Their are some affiliate links in this post for Infobarrel and Chitika.

I go in to this in more dept in a recent article i wrote for InfoBarrel that you may also want to check out for ways to make more money from AdSense that are within the T.O.S. - 12 Ways To Make More From AdSense without getting banned.In fact Joining Inforbarrels AdSense sharing scheme will also help increase your AdSense earnings, you can get all the info on joining here - Make Money From Info Barrel.

Getting back to the subject, we know we cant use two advertisers that use content to target ads at your readers so what advertising can you use ? Lets first look at a few options and then i will tell you what in my opinion is the best option.


Types Of Ads That Can Be Used With AdSense

Directly Selling Advertising On Your Blog - You can sell ad space on your blog, you can sell the ad space directly or use an outside agency to sell the advertising for you.The outside agency like Buy sell ads provide you with "Advertise Here" banners and when people click they buy that space from the agency.The agency is a middleman and takes a cut for it's services.The problem with selling ad space or more to the point getting people to buy the ad space is you need traffic and lots of it.If your blog is not getting a few thousand page views a day its likely to be a waste of time as you wont find buyers.

Affiliate Advertising On Your Blog - Affiliate advertising works in a similar way to selling ad space, you place banner ads on your blog for other websites.The big difference is when you sell ad space you are paid Weekly/Monthly or for impressions with affiliate marketing you get paid when someone clicks and ad on your blog and buys a product or spends money on the advertisers website.You will get paid a commission and the commissions vary for each advertiser.

Some of the options for affiliate advertising include the popular Amazon which can be added automatically for Blogger users.Google have their affiliate branch (Of course) the Google option is the Google affiliate network and this can be connected with your AdSense account.In fact their is no shortage of affiliate marketplaces such as Clickbank and Commission Junction to name a few.

Search Targeted Advertising - While i do display affiliate ads from both clickbank and the Google affiliate network the advertiser i make most from after AdSense is Chitika.Chitika ads work on a Pay Per Click system like AdSense but because they target the ads in a different way you can use them along with AdSense.

How Chitika Ads Work - While AdSense crawl your blog and base the ads on the keywords and phrases used Chitika ads are based fully on search traffic.Once you Sign Up For Chitika and add the code to your blog ads are only displayed to search traffic.So if someone finds this blog by searching Google for Blogger Tips they will be shown ads based on Blogger tips, if someone comes to this blog in any other way Chitika ads will not be displayed (You have the option to use filler ads).

I have Chitika ads in the sidebar of this blog right now - If you came here via a search engine you will see them, if you came directly or via any other link or feed they are not visible.

There is a bit more into the workings of Chitika ads that you can find out on their website or help pages.I would defiantly recommend checking it out and you can get all the extra information and sign up options here : Chitika Ad Network.

Remember you can get all these tips sent directly to your email and stay a step ahead.Its a quick and easy service Provided for Free by Google.Just fill in the Email form below the post.
If you need extra help on this or any tutorial just leave a comment, I love comments and feedback so this Blog is Do-Follow - when you comment here it helps Your Blogs Google rank !

With any advertiser including AdSense traffic equals cash plain and simple.But you don't need to be getting monster amounts of traffic, a steady flow of a few hundred page views a day may help pay for your family holiday.

Have You Had Success With Chitika Or Any Of The Mentioned Advertisers Mentioned ?

What advertising if any do you use on your blog ?

How Much Advertising is too Much ?

Advertising is a great means of generating revenue from your blog. But whether you use AdSense, InfoLinks, Kontera or one of the other similar pay per click platforms or you even sell your own ad space, there’s a limit you should impose.

A blog with too much advertising on it is detrimental to your readers, your advertisers and you!

Excessive ads, particularly graphical ones, detract attention away from the content of the site, which is what your readers are interested in. If attention is deflected from the content, your readers aren’t getting what they came to your site for. Why, therefore, would they ever come back? This means you lose out on readers.

Advertisers suffer too. Take, as an example, an amazing blog about classic cars. Let’s say this blog has 1000 subscribers and a further couple of thousand daily readers. If this blog already has a clear layout, one ad on that site (providing the advertiser is in a related niche)is going to get attention. Two ads will get noticed and each has a reasonable chance of being clicked on. Put twenty on there, however, and not only does each of the advertisers have a far lower chance of being clicked on but your readers are also likely to be irritated by the over presence of material designed to try and get them to buy something.

But just where is the line? Is there a magic formula to this? No. There isn’t. How much advertising you can realistically use on your blog before it becomes too much depends on several factors. It depends on the type of advertising, location of the advertising and how it is located in relation to your content. Flashing banners ads, for example, are much more intrusive than the Adsense text ads. So where you can probably use 5 or even 6 text ads from Google in your side bar, six vertical blingy banners would be far, far too much.

Before deciding on how much advertising to use, consider how many posts you have too. A blog with three posts, for example, that is only updated once in a blue moon yet has thirty ads on it screams out to readers that it’s a blog specifically for revenue generation and not essentially about providing information to readers. If you have a new blog, advertising should be introduced slowly.

I suppose to key rule is that the focus of the blog should not be lost to advertising. Your readers read your blog because the content covers topics they are interested in. They don’t read your blog because they are looking for sponsored links by Google. And while most readers are perfectly understanding of the fact that bloggers putting time and effort into maintaining a site want to generate some sort of revenue, when advertising becomes the main focus, you lose the readers who are interested in content.

It’s a fine balancing act, that’s for sure. But if you’re not sure whether you have too much advertising or not, you can always ask for honest and brutal feedback from your readers.

Drop Your Comments And Questions Below.

AdSense And Other Gadgets Beside Your Blogger Header

Many blogs now have AdSense Units or other ads and widgets in the header section of the blog.The most popular is the AdSense 468x60 unit beside the header text or image.In this post i will show you how you can also make the most of this space and have the option to place ads or any gadgets beside your header.


The default setting on Blogger is for the header to span the width of the blog and be used for the blog title only but this can easily be changed.The change used splits the header section into two separate sections and you are left with your actual blog title area on the left and you can add gadgets such as AdSense on the right.

To show the effect using a two section header on your blog i added it to a demo blog.You will see i added the popular 468x60 AdSense unit to the blogs header.

This was the layout before the change



And after the change you can see i have a new 'Add A Gadget' area :



You can see a demo of the result on this blog using the blogger minima template : Blogger Split Header

This post is in response to a comment by dil2010 on the post Add A Full Lenght Gadget Or AdSense Leaderboard Below Your Blog Header great question dil2010, if you want to suggest a post you can contact me or leave a comment.

To split your blogs header into two sections you need to replace two pieces of code in your blogs html.Although they are two small sections of code any time you replace code you have to be careful and take your time.

First make sure your template is backed up and follow the steps - You can do it !

Split Blogger Header Into Two Sections

Step 1. In your dashboard click 'Layout' > 'Edit Html'

Step 2. Find the following section of code in your blogs Html :
(Click Ctrl and F for a search bar to find the code - More Info)

#header {
margin: 5px;
border: 1px solid $bordercolor;
text-align: center;
color:$pagetitlecolor;
}

Note : The easiest way to locate this section is to first find #header and the rest will be below.This section in your template might be slightly different.

Step 3. You must now replace that section with this code :

#header {
float:left;
width:40%;
height:200px;
margin: 0px;
border: 0px solid $bordercolor;
text-align: center;
color:$pagetitlecolor;
}

#header2{float:left;
width:60%;
height:200px}

Note : If you feel comfortable you can change the width and height.

Step 4. Now find this section of code in your template :

NAME OF YOUR BLOG WILL BE HERE (Header)' type='Header'>

Note : Once again start by locating

and you will see the rest below it.

The part in red will be the actual title of your blog.

Step 5. Replace that section of code with this code :

Note : As shown in red above you must add your blogs title.Leave the part (Header) in blue as it is.

Step 6. Once you have made the changes you can save your template and you layout page will now show a two piece header for your AdSense or other gadgets.

If you do have any difficulty just drop a comment and i will be glad to help, if you are planning to use the new section for AdSense make sure to check out some other AdSense tips.

I also have a very Popular AdSense article on Infobarrel you should check out.

Have you changed your header ? Let us know !