Reinvesting Your Blogs Income

When many bloggers start out in blogging, they do so with very little in the way of funds to promote and improve their blog. Thanks to some hard work, they can get their blogs up and running, with traffic slowly filtering in as well as a steady stream of income. The income may not be huge but it is a start, you then have two options, the first being to pocket the money and buy yourself something nice. This option is appealing to many as they blog with a view to earning money to make their life more comfortable.

The second option is to reinvest the income back into your blog to enable you to raise the earning potential of your blog in the future. This is the most sensible option as $100 this month could be $200 next month and $400 the month after that. Of course there is the option to combine both approaches you could say that you will take 50% of the blogs earnings and the other 50% can be reinvested.

I will show you several ways in which you can reinvest money into your blog.

• Buy Advertising For Your Blog - Advertising spaces can be bought on blogs in most niches. Many blogs offer a 125x125px advertising system in their sidebars which can be bought at a reasonable price. By buying advertising on a site in your niche that receives a good level of traffic, you can improve the traffic to your blog as well as building your brand.

• Get Your Blog Re-Designed - This can help to give your blog a more professional look, this can make your blog look more creadible and reliable. You can also optimize your advertising which can lead to higher earnings in the future. If you can't afford a full blog redesign, why not invest in some new logo's or features that can benefit your blog. Unique Blog Designs have redesigned many of the top blogs.

• Buy Yourself A Second Blog - You put in the effort for your first blog and you have it earning money, you can just repeat the process with a 2nd blog. This is useful if you have a good knowledge in more than one niche. This is actually my second blog, my first was in the field of Fantasy Football (Soccer) 'Fantasy Football Guru'. My advice would be to only take this step if you have knowledge in a second niche, don't make a blog in a niche in which you have little interest as you will lose your motivation on that blog very quickly.

• Buy Reviews - Buying a review on a top blog in your niche is a great way of bringing targeted traffic to your blog. It is a great way of increasing the readership on your blog.

• Buy Blog Authors - This is somewhat linked to my point of buying a second blog, you can buy authors for your second blog if you don't have time to write on it yourself. Or you can buy authors for your current blog to increase the amount of content and to bring a fresh approach to your blog.

• Buy Products To Review - In some niches you can buy products that are big talking points and then review them on your blog. This is a great way of buying something nice related to your niche and using it to add extra depth to your blog.

The point to remember is that no matter how small your earnings, there is always a way to reinvest it into your blog, even if it is just adding it to an AdWords campaign to drive a few visitors to your site.

If you reinvest money back into your blog what approach do you take? How do you reinvest your blog earnings?

Yahoo Answers To Build Traffic

On one of my latest posts '15 Ways To Increase Traffic To Your Blog' I introduced the idea of answering questions on Yahoo Answers as a way of increasing traffic to your blog. The post received some comments from people who had not tried using Yahoo Answers and others were not sure how it worked.

Some comments received can be seen below:

Indeed those are really helpful, I want to read more..
anyway about the yahoo answer, how can I put my links on it, without putting it on the resource box of my answer?

by Keira

I haven’t tried Yahoo Answers yet, hadn’t even thought of that route, but it’s a good idea

by Muscle Post

The one that caught my attention was Yahoo answers.

by Gerri

For those of you who are not familiar with Yahoo Answers it is a website where users can ask questions relating to many preset categories, people can then answer the questions, with the user that originally posted the question then choosing the best answer from the ones supplied. Yahoo Answers covers a number of niches, so it is a viable option for many bloggers.

There are a few ways you can use Yahoo Answers, the first being, directly answering questions which you have covered in your blog, you can then answer the the question and link back to your blog post, this has worked well for me on posts such as my 'PHP Login Script Tutorial' where I answer the users question then sent them to my blog for more info. You can add a link by simply copying the URL into the answer box. This tactic can work effectively, you will also find that the same questions get asked alot so you can generate alot of links. This tactic helps to improve traffic to your blog.

The second way you can use Yahoo Answers is to look for trends in the questions being asked, as these can be used as ideas for future blog posts. I found the idea for my 'PHP: Be Notified When Google Crawls Your Site' post when I noticed alot of people where asking 'How do I know when Google crawls my website?'. These are questions that people are looking to be answered, so chances are there are many others looking for the answer to these questions, but can't find the information online already.

A few words of advice that I would give are:

1. Stick To Your Niche - Dont go off answering questions and linking back to your site/blog if it is not relevant.


2. Dont spam - Dont just answer question with a load of links.


3. Give accurate and informative answers - If you stick to your niche and give accurate and informative answers then you can gain a reputation in that niche that can help draw traffic to your blog.

The main advantage of Yahoo Answers is that the traffic you receive is targeted traffic and as people have asked questions over at Yahoo Answers, there is a good chance that they could comment on your blog as well.

I want to know about your experiences with Yahoo Answers? Keep us all updated on how you get on by commenting below.

10 Easy Ways To Improve Your Blog

I have compiled a list of 10 easy and quick ways to improve your blog. Each one should take no more than 20 minutes and could help to improve or optimize your blog.

Check for old links - As mentioned in 'Give Your Site an SEO Service', removing old links is handy for spiders as well as your blogs visitors.

Subscribe To Other Blogs In Your Niche - This allows you to keep up to date with events in your niche and also helps to breed new ideas for your blog.

Make Your Feed Accessible - Make it easy for your sites visitors to subscribe to your blog by making logos stand out, and by linking to your feed whenever you get the chance. Subscribe To My Feed

Optimize Your Permalinks - Dont stick with the standard WordPress link structure as this is not good for SEO, instead change the links from this: http://www.yourblog.com/p?=89 to something more focused to your posts title: http://www.yourblog.com/killer-blog-post-title. This will help a little with your SERP rankings.

Stay Clear Of Unnecessary Widgets - Sure you may think adding lots of cool widgets to your blogs makes it look alot better, but what is the benefit to your blogs visitors. My advice would be to keep to simple widgets that are useful and relevant.

Link To Other Blogs In Your Niche - Your blog might not be able to offer everything your visitors are looking for, but you may know a blog that has information that is useful, my advice would be to link to that blog. Sure you may feel like you are sending visitors away from your blog, but the visitor will remember that you provided them with good extra material. The owner of the other blog may even link back to some of your content.

Install The Related Post Plugin - This is something that I have covered on my blog, it makes a big difference to your blogs page views per visit. 'Related Post Plugin Can Boost Page Views'.

Create A Contact Us Page - Make yourself available to your blogs readers, don't shut yourself away, open up for questions, it could even lead to great post ideas, or links with other blogs. Contact Me, if you would like to ask any questions.

Reply To Comments On Your Blog - This is a really simple way to help grow your blog. Your visitors will be more likely to comment if they think that you will reply, and it can also help to build a community on your blog. I would also recommend the 'Top Commentators Plugin'.

Optimize Your 404 Page - I did a guest post over at bloggingtips.com about this very item. Stop people hitting the back button when they arrive at a 404 error page, make them read your blog instead. Here is my post over at bloggingtips.com: 'Improve Bounce Rate by Optimizing 404 Pages'.

You now have 10 great ways to improve your blog, that are simple and quick to perform. Do you have a quick and easy tip that can help improve your blog? Post them below.

RSS Hugger: Promote Your Feed

Has been a few days since my last post. I am currently working on a new WordPress Plug-in that should be available in the coming weeks. In the meantime I have a tip to help you promote your RSS feed. You can get your own page on rssHugger for 10 years. Here is a quote from rsshugger.com:

rssHugger is a new website developed to help bloggers promote their blogs, and to help visitors discover new blogs that write about subjects that the readers are interested in. Through the power of the internet and viral marketing, rssHugger looks to bring blog writers and blog readers closer together. If you own a blog, you can get your own page on rssHugger for 10 years for giving an honest review of the site on your blog. If you want to join rssHugger but do not want to review our site, you can pay a one time review fee of $20. rssHugger will be the first ever quality, spam free, and viral rss directory strictly for bloggers.

It provides you with a chance to spread the word about your blog and attract new visitors. It is free, even if it only brings a few new subscribers to your blog it was worth it. They also promote the top 100 RSS Feeds, which is updated regularly.

Have you tried rssHugger? Did it make a difference to your blog? Let us know your thoughts.

RSS Group Writing Project

15 Ways To Increase Traffic To Your Blog

Many people ask about how they can increase the traffic to their blog. Your blogs traffic is a direct indicator of its success, so everyone should be looking to increase the traffic to their blog. I have compiled a list of 15 ways I believe you can increase traffic on your blog.

1. Put a Link in the signature area of any forums you use. This will help to increase traffic because if people like what you are talking about in the forum, they may head over to your blog to check out the rest of your work. It also helps with building links to your site.


2. Leave comments on other blogs in your niche with a link back to your site. My tip here would be to not link to your homepage but to a post on your blog that is related to the post in which you are commenting on. This can increase traffic in two ways, the first is that people may read your comment, like your ideas and then check out your blog. The second way it could increase traffic is by the blog owner seeing your comments on his/her blog, then linking to your site in future posts.


3. Responding to questions on Yahoo Answers. There are thousands of questions asked on Yahoo Answers everyday, if you can answer them, with a link back to your site then the person who asked the question could visit your site for more information, but more importantly, when the question gets indexed in search engines, anyone else asking that question will find a link to your blog.


4. Write articles and submit them to article directories. This is an old but still effective method of bringing traffic to your blog. Write some interesting articles, make sure you inclide links back to your blog in the article. Submit the articles to article directories, you should see some traffic from these articles if they are good.


5. Use Pay-Per-Click programs such as Google AdWords. Simple enough really, buy the top spots on Google to receive higher traffic to your blog.


6. Optimize page titles for increased search engine traffic. Include keywords in your page titles so that they correspond with what people are searching for.


7. Purchase Ads on other blogs. Many blogs have 125x125 Banners in their sidebars which can be purchased, look to buy 1-2 from blogs in your niche, this should help to bring targeted traffic to your blog.


8. Give something away for free. Everyone loves a freebie, is a good way of getting traffic, as well as links to your site, as bloggers love linking to free stuff.


9. Hand out business cards when you go events related to your niche. Put your blogs URL on business cards and hand them to prospective visitors.


10. Contact other blog owners in your niche, make yourself and your blog known to them, then ask for links to your blogs content in their future posts, as well as asking if you can do a guest post (See Below)


11. Write a guest post on another blog in your niche. This allows you to make yourself known to another blogs audience, if they liked to blog you are guest posting on then they should like your blog. Make sure you link back to your blog at some point in the post.


12. Tell everyone you know about your blog. Tell your friends, Family and Pets about your blog, you never know when they might mentioned it to someone they know, and your word-of-mouth advertising can begin.


13. Put a link to your blog in your Email Signature. Now every email you send will be a small advert for your blog.


14. Conduct some research into a topic related to your niche and publish your results. Then contact the blog owners in your niche that you know and tell them all about your research, they might even find it useful and link back to your blog.


15. Link to other blogs in your niche. This is a good way of making your blog known to other blog owners in your niche, but also, most blogs show track backs, which means that when you link to another blogs posts, a link is created back to your blog from it.

I hope you find these tips useful. Feel free to add your tips below and give your feedback on the 15 tips mentioned above.