One thing that you need to do, though, is present your blog in a way that people will actually read it!  This means a couple of things.  Firstly, of course, you need to write on topics of interest, and you need to write well.  Another thing that I recommend is putting some nice images on your blog.  Pictures always grab attention.

But, where do you get the images?  Do you just go find nice pictures on the internet, “grab” them, and put them on your site?  Well, a lot of people do that, but I don’t recommend it.  I don’t do that myself, and I think you shold not either.  Doing that can lead to some trouble for you down the road, and you don’t want trouble.

I recommend four ways of getting nice pictures for your site.

The first method that I will talk about is to take a lot of pictures yourself, and use them on your site!  Did you realize, even just one picture can be used for many blog posts?  It’s true.  if you crop it in different ways, make it differnet sizes, take out just part of the picture to use, etc., you can get a ton of useful images from a single good picture!  I know, because I do this myself.  Get yourself a good little digital camera and carry it with you wherever you go!  I have a library of 10,000 or more photos that I have taken over the years, and I use them all the time to spruce up my articles online!  You can do it too.

The second way that I recommend for getting good images for your site is through Stock Image sites.  I like to use a site called “Dreamstime” which sells thousands of stock images.  You can often buy stock images for as low as $1 or $2 per image.  That’s dirt cheap!  You know what?  You can even get stock images free!  Dreamstime has a section where every day, 365 days per year (366 on leap year!), they offer one or two of the images for free download if you are a member (which is free).  I make it a habit to download the free images every day, even if I can think of no use for them.  Someday, I will write an article that will have some use for those images!  And, if I don’t ever use a certain image, what have I lost?  A small space on my hard drive?  No big deal!

The third method that you can use to get pictures to use on your site is to check Wikipedia.  Most pictures on Wikipedia carry a Creative Commons license, which means that you can use them (just give credit to where they came from).  There are some nice images, and usually high resolution images available for you on Wikipedia.  Just go the Wikipedia article for the subject that you are writing about and see what images they have for that particular subject.

And, finally, the fourth way that I suggest for getting images is to use a WordPress plugin called “Photo Dropper.”  Photo Dropper will go to Flikr and find photos that carry a Creative Commons license, which meet your keyword that you search for.  Any photos found by Photo Dropper can be used with no licensing problems, and Photo Dropper even automatically does everything needed to fit the terms of the license, by automatically adding a credit to the photographer, and a link back to their Flikr account.  It’s a great plugin!

So, spruce up your blog or website!  Add some nice images to make it look better and to grab your reader’s attention!

One thing that I really believe in is to build a community type site.  Make everybody feel like they’re part of the community, encourage them to join in, and talk back to them when you can!

What do I mean by that?  Well when people participate on your blog by leaving comments, respond to them!  Engage them in conversation.  Don’t just ignore them.  Some people feel that they write a blog post, and they’re done.  They’ve done their job.  Now other people can come and leave comments, but the job of the blog author is finished.  Well, I don’t see it that way.  The more you respond to your commenters, the more they feel like they’re part of the site.  Engage them, challenge them, when you do this.  They’ll come back for more.

Take a look at the graphic above.  This is a screen capture from the control panel of one of my other blogs. Over on the right side, where you see the little gray area with the number inside that shows how many comments were left on each particular post.  So if you notice the post at the top got 54 comments, followed by 29, followed by 6, by 33, 29, 103, 28 and again in 28.  What is that 6 doing in there? It’s been a long time since I’ve only had six comments on any post.  So, how did this happen?

Well, on a particular day that this post went public, I was really busy and I was unable to respond to the comments.  As you can see that man little interest from my readers.

So, do you want people to participate on your blog?  Leave comments?  Keep coming back to check what’s new?  Well, you need to engage your readers than!  Respond to their comments, let them know what you think!

I know people who have blogs, and a lot of them complain to me that nobody participates on their blog.  Nobody comments.  It just seems dead.  Well, at times I left comments on their blogs, and there was no response.  I kept going back to see if they responded to what I said, but nothing.  So, after a while, I just quit going there at all.  So in my eyes, their blog did die, at least for me it did.

The graphic above tells the whole story.  If you engage your readers, they’ll be back for more.  If you start getting a few more comments like that, more readers will join in.  It’s a never ending circle.  The participation on your site just keeps growing.

Don’t let your site die!  Engage your readers.

I blame Wordpress.

“Why Wordpress,” you say?

Well, I blame Wordpress because it has become like a treadmill that never stops.  First of all, you have a never ending parade of updates to the software.  As soon as you update to a new version and get all the kinks worked out, it seems like there is a new, critical security update that you have to do immediately!  If you don’t update on time, it’s like running around in public naked - you just don’t do that!

Here’s what happened today.  I had a couple of improvements that I wanted to make on one of my sites.  When I went to that site, I noticed that the Plugin panel on Wordpress was telling me that two plugins were out of date.  Oops!  I better update those right away.  So, I went and downloaded the new releases on these plugins, and installed them.  What the….   I just checked my blog and the whole top half of my screen went black!  Hmm… turns out that one of the plugins didn’t work!  So, I reverted back to the old version, it worked fine.  That second upgrade that I did didn’t work either.  So, I eliminated that one.  I have dozens of blogs, so all of this piddling around took me half the day (or more).

The thing is, I am feeling like with Wordpress, it is getting to the point that there are so many Admin tasks that need to be completed, that I rarely have time to produce the quality content that I want to share with my readers!  If I had one blog, maybe two it would not be a big deal, but I have more than that.  It is making me wonder what I should do.  Abandon some of my sites?  Find a new software to run on?

I have been playing with the idea of moving to Drupal.  Today I took the step of installing Drupal on one of my inactive domains, and playing with it.  It only took a few minutes when I realized that if I changed platforms, that meant that I had to re-learn the whole system again!  I had to create a lot of new templates.  Hmm… I have sites with thousands of posts on them, which means that I had to import all those posts into a new platform.  Importing thousands of posts usually doesn’t go as smoothly as it should.

Hmm… I don’t think I want to change platforms.  I also don’t think that Wordpress is the right platform any longer.  Updating plugins and platform software doesn’t bring in any money.  However, if you don’t do the updates, your site will end up getting owned by somebody else who hacks in.  Either way, you haven’t written content that keeps your readers coming back.

For me, the call comes down to what direction to go in order to make the most money.  Problem is… right now I can’t figure out which direction will achieve that goal.

What do you think?

I am wondering, though, do you think that Wordpress is still the way to go for a website or blog?  I have been thinking about this for several months now.  I have a couple of reasons for the question:

1. Wordpress is the most popular blogging client.  No doubt.  That, though, can have positive and negative sides.  First, since it is so popular, it is the default target for people with malicious intentions.  For example, if somebody wants to hack a website, figuring out a vulnerability in Wordpress is the best way to go.  With just one vulnerability, he can hack millions of sites, if he chooses to do so.
2. Because Wordpress is a hacking target, that means that there are constant updates coming down the tunnel.  It seems like Wordpress is getting new versions on at least a monthly basis these days.  For somebody like me, who has a ton of sites, this means that doing all the upgrades can be a time consuming job.

Because of these factors, I have been considering that perhaps it is time to move to another platform.  Yes, I do believe that Wordpress is the best out there, but the considerations above make me wonder if it is the right way to go.

What do you think?  Another blog platform?  Maybe a CMS (Content Management System) site?

Let me know what you are using, I’d like to take a look and see what others have going!

Some people have very “general” blog sites. One day they write about the flowers they planted in the garden, the next day they write about a new factory being built in their town. A few days later they write a post about their kid’s school project. Frankly, these things are not related. Or are they? Well, I can think of one way that these could be tied together. Let’s say that you live in “Anytown, USA.” If you had a blog about what is happening in Anytown, USA, you could make these topics all tie together nicely. One day you write about what kind of plants and flowers are in season in Anytown, and how you just planted some in your garden. Next day, “Anytown is getting a new factory which will bring 10,000 new jobs.” A few days later, what is going on in Anytown Schools. But, if you can’t do something like this, it’s better to focus in on a certain area that interests you.

Let’s say you are an avid gardener. You can have a blog about gardening. Teach people like me, who know nothing about gardening, how to do it. Just write about gardening. Let’s say that you also have a passion for cooking. Well, start a different blog about cooking!

I’m going to assume that most of the readers of this site already have a website or blog, so you are halfway home. Do you have Google AdSense on your site? If you have even a half-busy site, you can make much more than $1 per day by using Google AdSense on your site! If you don’t have AdSense already, go to google.com/adsense and sign up! I’m not making anything from referring you, I just want to help you get started.

Your next step will be to set up a regular schedule for blogging. The more often you update your site, the more that people will come and visit. When people come and visit, there is more chance that they will click on your Google Ads, and when they click on an ad that interests them, you make money!

Congratulations… this could be your first step to checking off your assignment for this week: to come up with one new idea that will produce $1 per day for you!

See you tomorrow with more ideas.

So, if it is Really Simple Syndication, what does that mean? Well, simply put, it means that if you offer RSS on your site, people can subscribe to it and have it delivered to their desktop. When you publish an article on a site with RSS, that article will be pushed to your reader’s desktop in a matter of moments. If people choose to subscribe to your site, the text (and photos) of your articles will be available in the reader’s “Feed Reader.” Feed Reader is a piece of software that collects all of these RSS subscriptions and the reader uses this software to read the articles. Most current software, especially blog software (Wordpress, Typepad and others) and other Content Management software (Joomla, Mambo and others) include RSS as part of the package. I would say that probably about 75% of current websites offer RSS of some form.

So, there are also special programs that a user can have on his PC for gathering his RSS subscriptions. There are dozens of Feed Readers out there. Bloglines, Google Reader and many many others. Personally, I like to read blogs from within my browser, and I use Firefox to gather RSS headlines, then I go to the site to do the reading.

The number of RSS subscriptions that you have has kind of become a way of measuring the success of a blogger. Personally, though, I feel that this is not a good metric for measuring success. You see, in my case, I don’t really push RSS or encourage people to subscribe.

Why don’t I encourage people to subscribe?

Well, if somebody is reading your site through an RSS reader, they generally don’t see the ads on your site. Let’s face it, I primarily blog to make money. I do it for other reasons too, but if I could not make money doing it, I would at lease have a lot fewer blogs than I do. If somebody reads through a feed reader, they don’t see my ads, and thus can’t partake in my advertiser’s products. Yes, you can also place ads in your RSS feed, but from everything I have read, those ads are not nearly as successful as ads on the website. Thus, I actually prefer it is people come to my site, rather than read me through their feed reader.

Now, I am not an expert on every topic, and I readily admit that I might be missing something here. So, if you are better educated on this topic, let me know where I am straying. For a writer who wants to make money from what he writes, how can he successfully convert readers to profits when they are using a feed reader to subscribe? Honestly, I hope that somebody can point me to something that I don’t know about this, because I might be missing some opportunities.

Any opinions?

One quick final note here. When it comes to reading, I love RSS. It’s just that I am looking for input on the writer’s side.

A little less than a year ago, I really decided to make a push toward creating a community on one of my sites.  Today, I have to say that my effort has been quite successful.  People on this particular site comment on almost every article that is written.  Not only they comment, those who comment usually interact with each other!  In other words, reader John knows about reader Jim, and they interact with each other in the comments section of the site.

Another important thing on this is for you, as the site owner, to become a friend of your readers.  How do you do this?  Well, you interact with the readers.  If a person leaves a comment, you should reply to it and show that you care about your readers and the topics that they bring up.  Be friendly with them.  Don’t belittle your readers.  Be humble.  These things are all very important in building a community online.

Guess what…  unfortunately, there are also downsides to community building!  I’m sorry to say that, but it is true.  If part of your purpose of the site is to earn money, becoming a community makes it much more difficult to earn money from the site.  This sounds like it should be wrong, but believe me, it is correct.  Why?  Well, if you get people who come back to your site every day, sometimes multiple visits per day, they generally become blind to the ads on your site, and tend to ignore them.  New visitors, or infrequent visitors click on ads a lot more than a regular reader does.  Still, I believe that building a community is valuable, and is the way to go, though.  There are ways to combat this “ad blindness” and still capitalize from your site.  Do things like changing the ads from time to time.  Change the color of the ads.  Put up different types of ads.  Move the location of ads from time to time.  All of these things will tend to catch the eye of visitors who are used to the “old look.”  When you catch the eye, you have a better chance of an ad click too.

So, I really encourage you to build a community on your site!  I know that it is something that makes me feel good, and helps me enjoy my blogging even more!

Linking to other sites is what the Web is all about!  If nobody linked to other sites, navigating would be very difficult.  If you are interested in Living in the Philippines, perhaps you visit my site on the topic.  While you are on my site, you will find that I have links to other sites that are of interest.  So, when you go visit those other sites, you will find more links to even more sites.  It’s a never ending thing.

I get e-mails every day from people asking me to link to their websites.  If it is a site that is well written and on-topic, I have no problem making the link.  If., however, somebody wrote to me at this site and asked me to link to their site about the US Civil War, I probably wouldn’t do that, because it is a completely different subject.  My readers on the whole, would probably not be interested.  Did you know that if you link to non-relevant sites Google can even penalize you for that?  How do they penalize you?  Well, they move you down in the rankings.  If people do a search, you will be further down, thus harder to find.

Another thing that is important is to be sure that you are linking to quality sites!  Google has a thing that they call “bad neighborhoods.”  What is a bad neighborhood?  Well, things like online gambling sites, porn sites, scam sites and that sort of thing are bad neighborhoods.  If you link to these, not only will you be penalized, you might be dropped from Google’s rankings altogether!  You don’t want that!

One thing I hear a lot from people is that they want to link to their “friends.”  Well, I am a guy who enjoys a good friend, but I don’t link to them if their topic is not relevant to my site.  Why?  Well, it is just not a good practice to do so.  Do you want your site to be successful?  I must assume you do, or why would you go to the effort?  Think about this, on the big sites like Yahoo, Google, CNN and such, do they have links to their friends?  NO, of course they don’t!  If you went to CNN.com and to Larry King’s section of the site, do you think their is a link to his son’s website?  No, it will never happen, because Larry King’s kid’s website is not relevant to the TV show Larry King Live.  So, if you want to achieve success, you should emulate these people who already are successful on the web.  Now, if you write about what it is like to live in the Philippines (as I do on another of my sites) and you have a friend who writes on the same subject, a link is then relevant and the right thing to do!

What I am getting to with all of this is that you should keep your blogroll clean!  Be judicious in giving out links!  Given a link only when it is deserved.  When it is deserved, though, be generous!

For today, let’s talk about Google AdSense. AdSense is probably the number one means of blog monetization around. There must be literally millions of people using Google to make money from their sites. I know that I do, and I bet you do too, if you have a site earning money for you already.

Google has rules for just about every aspect of using them to monetize your site. For example, there is a limit as to how many ad units you can put on any given page on your site. You can’t have a few sentences of content and 40 ads on the page! Google limits you to putting 3 ad units on a single page. Yes, they have other products that you can also include in the page, but for actual ad units you are limited to 3 such units on a single page. If you put 4, you are in violation of Google’s terms, and you risk losing your AdSense Account.

So, since you are allowed 3 ad units, you should make sure that you put 3 on each page, right?

NO.

Not Necessarily.

Sometimes, putting fewer ad units will earn you more money! Of course, a lot of people are reading this and thinking that I must be crazy. The more ads you put, the better chance somebody will click on one, right? That part may be true, but you should also consider that you can get MORE clicks, and still earn LESS. How can that be? Let’s have a look.

How does the whole advertising game work on AdSense? Well, if a company wants to advertise on the Web through Google, they open an AdWords account with Google. They sign up and they bid for keywords. For instance, they might choose the word “flowers” as the Keyword that they are targeting. And, they might say that they are willing to pay 50 Cents (US currency) for every time that somebody clicks on their ad. Another company may also choose the keyword “Flowers” and they might bid $1 for that Keyword. Other companies may also bid on that same word, and bid as little as 1 cent. So, for instance, let’s say that a total of 20 companies have bid on the Keyword “Flowers” and the bids range from $1.00 per click all the way down to 1 Cent per click.

OK, next, on your blog, you write a post about Flowers. Ding Ding Ding! Google sees that this post is about Flowers, and suddenly the whole process kicks in, and those people who bid for the keyword “Flowers” have their ads placed on your site. The person who bid the highest amount gets his ad placed first. The second place bidder gets his ad listed second, and so on. Now, if somebody clicks on those ads on your site, you get a share of that money that was bid for the click.

So, let’s say that you put the maximum of 3 ad units on your site. Each one of those ad units can have multiple ads, as many as 5 ads on each ad unit. So, if you put 3 ad units on the page, you may have as many as 15 different ads from Google. This would mean that you have the top 15 bidders advertising on your post about flowers. Advertiser #1 bid $1 per click. Advertiser #2 bid less, and Advertiser #3 bid even less than that. So, in having put 15 different advertisers on that one post, you may have a bunch of guys bidding 5 cents or even 1 cent per click! Those clicks are not worth very much. It takes a lot of 1 cent clicks to make up for just one click from the guy who bid $1.

Let’s say that you put just one ad unit on that post. Suddenly, you have only the top 5 bidders advertising, and the lowest click might be worth 50 cents or so still. So, in this case, you could get 10 clicks on that page that has 3 ad units, and make less than if you got just one click on that page with only 1 ad unit. It sounds kind of complicated, but if you think it through, you’ll find that it is actually quite simple!

So, if you are blogging in a niche that has few advertisers, you might explore the possibility of cutting back on the number of ads that you place on your site! You might make MORE money that way! One thing to keep in mind - it doesn’t hurt much to experiment and see what pays off best in your case. You can always switch back after a few days of testing!

For me, a blog is a website! Using a blog platform (like Wordpress) just makes it easier to manage and update your website. I have sites that I don’t even write on, but I use Wordpress to set them up and make them look the way I want. After setting it up, I just leave it alone until or unless I want to change it in some way. Some, sites, though I never change! Is that a blog? What do you think? My take is that it is not a blog, but rather a website that uses blog software for management. However, this site is a blog, but I’d also say it’s a website! Confusing?