At the start of this lesson there is an assignment. Please do this first before continuing. Go to www.rssreader.com and download the
software. It is FREE. Once you have installed RSS reader, click on the Add link at the top of the screen and in the space provided add
http://wwww.stevereports.com/feed You can add folders to organize your feeds to suit your interests.
I personally use RSS Reader to track news releases in topics of interest including local market business news in areas where I often do consulting work. I also track each of the RSS feeds for niche sites I have developed to make sure my reports are picked up by the directories within an hour after they are released.
If you have done this properly, you will now receive in your reader a list of articles released from Steve Reports including this Blogging For Profits Course. Of course you have just learned by example how an RSS feed reader works and you can now add any content distributed using RSS. Look for the RSS symbols like the little orange one in the right hand corner of Steve
Reports.
This course will give you, as promised, the exact steps of what you need to do to make money for your business using blog technology. Before we get into the nuts and bolts I want to make sure you are already thinking about how you can take advantage of what you are learning to make money. When you have a view of the end result you are working for, the details will be more interesting, relevant and you will stay motivated to implement the steps as we go through
them.
The primary ways to make money using a blog are:
1. Advertising revenue from contextual ads. The number one source of relevantcontextual ads is Google and Google’s adsense program. You will find examples of Google adsense ads in various places at Steve Reports. I use Google adsense on nearly every page of every site I own. If you do not have a Google adsense account, go to www.google.com and click on advertising at their home page then click on adsense and set up your account. You will need that active soon.
2. Selling other people’s products and earning affiliate revenue. www.Clickbank.com is a great source of information products. There are others and we will cover more of them as this course progresses. There are many sources for information products, software, and physical products that offer affiliate revenue when you make a sale. I am a member of a number of programs for physical products including Commission Junction and Linkshare.
3. Selling your own products and services.
Of course, using combinations of the above can optimize your revenue flow. Steve Reports is designed primarily to market my professional consulting services. It is also set up to capitalize on adsense revenue and build a contact list where, just as in this course, I reference other people’s products as an affiliate.
Often there is resistance when I advise people to take advantage of as many revenue sources as possible. For example a retailer with an online store objects because they do not want to promote competing products and do not want people to leave their site by clicking on an ad.
Here is my advise and you are encouraged to test it and, of course discard it if it doesn’t work for you. In summary, most sites can promote complementary products and capitalize on traffic looking to spend money. In the case of a retailer with an online store, I first advise to capture the contact information in a database of everyone who buys. Then I recommend a compelling offer be made for visitors to leave their name and email address so autoresponder technology
can be used in a follow-up campaign.
As this relates to contextual advertising, test the results. It may be that you are better off using specific niche content websites to promote a specific offer and use contextual advertising and affiliate programs to generate incremental revenue from visitors who don’t buy from you. On the other hand, you may be better off focusing on capturing name and email addresses and implementing a follow-up campaign. In the follow-up campaign you can reference complimentary products where you are an affiliate. What is the optimum answer? I have no idea. You have to test.
Now, everyone is anxious to learn from this course and make more money. In the next lesson we will proceed with some of the boring stuff you need to do to be able to implement you making money strategy. However, you must have a strategy so begin right now to define what you think will be your best approach for making money? I do this then hedge my conclusions by implementing multiple strategies. You can too but you need to pick one and then you can select
derivative strategies from the one.
Please avoid analysis paralysis. If you are not sure about your strategy, then simply follow the instructions to set up your RSS reader, Google adsense account and your Clickbank account. At this point everything is FREE. In the next lesson you will learn about the primary infrastructure you must have in place to implement the Blogging For Profits plan.
Author: Steve Pohlit, Business Consultant "Helping Companies Make Extraordinary Profits Now!…No Reports Just Results" using The Profit System. Register for the FREE course "How To Increase Profits by 30% or more in 90 Days or Less" at www.stevepohlit.com
