What would you say if I told you that there are things that many bloggers could do on their blogs that could bring about large increases in their AdSense earnings in 24 hours or less?

One of the misconceptions about making money from blogging that is out there is that the best way to increase your blog’s earnings is to increase the traffic to your blog.

“Double your traffic and you’ll double your income” I heard one speaker say at a conference earlier in the year.

Well that speaker is right…. increased traffic generally does lead to increased advertising income…. but doubling your traffic can be a massive task one that could take months or even years to achieve.

Growing readership is something every entrepreneurial blogger needs to be working on as it does help with income levels but…

What if there’s a faster way to grow your AdSense earnings?

Over the next week I want to look at a few methods of increasing the revenue from AdSense on your blog that can have immediate impact upon earnings.

Before We Begin:

I should say before I go any further that these won’t work on every blog - if you’ve already optimized your blog well they’ll have less impact - but if you have a blog l like I did a few years ago you could see some significant improvements. These tips will be more basic for some readers than others - so if you consider yourself to be at an advanced level you might want to just scan over the posts (although a refresher can’t hurt).

I also should say that these principles don’t just apply to Adsense. The same can be said about Chitika, Shopping Ads, WidgetBucks and other ad networks.

Lastly - I want to say that I’m not usually one to use claims like ‘increase your earnings overnight’ - as we all know, blogging for money is a long term thing. However these lessons did have immediate impact upon my own earnings. I had already been blogging for some time - but together what I share increased my own earnings by over 100% very quickly.

Stay tuned for Part 1 shortly.

Share This

http://www.problogger.net

So this is the brave new world… Let’s be totally honest (for once) - I’ve never seen a bigger pile of dren.

u add my blog as one of your links, and i add your blog as one of my links i got pr2 blog

Now you will get a free ebook every day

(2nd prize, 2 ebooks)

What would you do with an Unlimited Supply of FREE Business Cards? Can you imagine the possibilities?

(more…)

http://www.codescheme.net

Yesterday I wrote 5 tips to help increase your follower numbers on Twitter. Thanks to everyone for your comments and suggestions on the topic.

As I read over the comments I realized that there were a few more things that I’d been learning on how to use Twitter that might be worth sharing. So over the coming few days I’ll pick up a few threads of thought that your comments sparked for me on the topic of growing your Twitter Presence. Today I want to talk about a tactic that I’ve used a little lately that might help those of you who don’t live in parts of the world where the majority of your followers live.

Pre-Prepare Your Tweets

This one is going to probably rub some Twitter users up the wrong way because it is a medium which is very spontaneous and immediate - but I pre-prepare and plan a portion of my tweets.

This is something that I do with a minority of the things I do on Twitter but for two main reasons I find that it is helpful to have some Tweets that ‘I prepared earlier’.

1. My Time Zone - As mentioned in my earlier post, living in a time zone which is almost completely opposite to that of my followers can be frustrating. When I was in the US earlier in the year I realized just what I was missing out on when I suddenly was about to use Twitter in the same time zone.

For me the times that I am awake when my followers are awake are either when I first wake up (7am-9am) and just as I’m heading for bed (10pm onwards). The problem is that in these times I’m not really at my best. I tend to have more insightful things to say, better questions to ask and more value to add to conversations at mid morning here in Australia.

As a result if I think of something to Tweet during the day that is timeless (ie it’s not related to the here and now) then I sometimes save it to Tweet late at night or first thing in the morning.

2. Timing is Everything - Twitter is a medium where timing is very important. As already mentioned, if you Tweet something when your followers are asleep and it’ll go largely unread. However even in peak times if you tweet something profound just after you’ve tweeted 10 other things and it could go unnoticed - lost in the crowd of your own tweets. As a result I find that sometimes the best time to Tweet is after a pause in the conversation.

For example sometimes I might think of something new to Tweet in the middle of another Twitter Conversation but wait until everyone has had their say on the last topic before starting a new one. I find that if I do I have a lot better response rate than if I’m talking to three people about three things at once.

Tools for Pre-Tweeting - My Twitter followers will know that a month or two back I went on the hunt for tools that would allow me to ‘Pre-Tweet’ or schedule my Tweets to go off at particular times - just like most blog platforms allow you to set a post to go off at scheduled times. There are a couple of services that allow this - they are TweetLater and TweetAhead. I should point out that I’ve had mixed results with them - particularly TweetAhead which lost tweets and mistimed others. As they say on their site - they need more servers. TweetLater looks promising though, I’ve used it 5 times so far and it’s been perfect so far.

While these tools are useful - I tend to take a simpler approach. I have a text file open on my desktop where I keep my prepared tweets. It currently has a few questions to ask, a quote or two to share and a few links that I want to share also.

As mentioned above - I only pre-prepare a minority of my Tweets. I do like the medium for it’s spontenaity and fast flowing interaction and if all of your tweets were dryly pre-tweeted I think it’d reflect on your follower’s experience.

Share This

http://www.problogger.net

Last month at Digital Photography School I ran the biggest competition that I’ve ever run (on that blog). I put a $729 Nikon DSLR up for grabs for one lucky active member in my the forum attached to the blog.

The competition was successful in my mind but today while I was doing a little analysis on it I thought it might make an interesting case study for ProBlogger. I hope you find it useful as you consider the option of running competitions to promote your blogs. Note: I’ve previously written on How to run a successful competition on your blog - and much of my strategy for this one was based upon that.

The Goal - the aim of the exercise was simple. To sign up new members to my forum and increase page views. My hope was to have a bumper month but also get new members signed up to have an ongoing impact on overall activity going forward.

The Competition - The idea was simple. Every post made by a forum member put them in the running to win the DSLR. Every time they made a post it was another entry. I’d run these types of competitions before so I knew the principle worked.

My Concern and The Risk - What did worry me a little was that in putting up a prize to that value I could actually be spending more than I was going to make out of the increased traffic. I figured if I could increase ad sales by $24.30 per day over the month I’d break even (although any ongoing increase would mean profit).

I did try to find a sponsor for the camera so as not to have to shoulder the load alone but while DPS has good traffic (it currently does 1 millions visits a month) it’s still seen as a small fish by the camera manufacturers and retailers (if anyone knows anyone at Nikon or Canon etc - please shoot us an introductory email as I’d love to find someone in those companies who is interested in interacting with blogs).

Results: Traffic

The easiest way to measure the performance of the competition is to look at the Raw Traffic data. The following graph is for Pages Viewed on the forum for 2008 so far.

You can see that the forum was kicking along at a steady pace before 3 April when I announced the forum but that on the first day page views almost doubled. They then tapered off a bit during the month but stayed higher for the full month of the competition than they had been previously.

Here is the page views of the forum for the month of the competition) compared with the page views of the forum for the previous month (green). Over the full month traffic was increased 66.7%.

Interestingly the last 7 days since the competition finished we’ve seen a drop off in page views but it’s still 35% higher than for the 7 days before the competition so the longer term impact of the competition seems to have been to increase overall traffic beyond the competition itself.

Results: New Members

Recruiting new members to the forum was another goal of the competition. We’d had an influx in January of 1803 new sign ups as a result of a previous smaller competition but since had been around the 1200 per month. April however saw a boost in numbers by an extra 2823 members.

Now not all of them will convert to ongoing active members but they are all signed up and most have opted in to receive updates from the forums which means there’s a higher chance of drawing them back next time we do a promotion.

Results: Activity

Another bonus related to increased traffic is the increases in user activity on the forum. Here’s the increase in new ‘threads’ to the forum (up from the 1500’s to just over 4000 for the month)

And here is the increase in new posts (up from 1400 per month to over 43000 for the month).

This increase in activity is good in my mind for a couple of reasons. Firstly it’s about reader engagement. Every time someone made a post they had DPS further enmeshed in their minds. When you post regularly to a forum for a month you’re more likely for that to become a habit, you’re more likely to remember the brand of DPS when they next need information on photography etc.

The other thing about new posts and threads is that it’s new pages of content on your site. Every time a new post and thread goes up on the forum you have another page of user generated content for the search engines to find, index and rank you for. Every new page is a potential new doorway into your site.

Results: Earnings

So did I make my money back? While seeing an increase in profits for the month wasn’t my main priority I did want to make at least enough back from the competition to pay for the camera that I was giving away.

While I’m not going to go into details of exact earnings of the site I can reveal that the increased activity on the forum did see it’s earnings go up by over the required $24.30 a day needed to pay for the camera. It wasn’t a great deal more but considering it is still up the impact of the competition will make it a profitable event into the future.

The Downside

So far it’s sounding fairly rosy isn’t it. Increases in traffic, members, activity and even earning are all good. However there was two downsides.

1. Moderation Workload - I have an amazing team of moderators to DPS but the month of April was the hardest that they’ve ever worked. I totally underestimated the extra load upon them in setting up this competition. It has made me reconsider how I run future competitions.

2. Impact upon Quality of Reader Interaction - over all the increased activity of the site brought in some wonderful new members who are interacting on the site with genuine interaction. However a small number of new members were just there for the competition - even though I made it clear that spammy entries wouldn’t win. This impacted moderators workloads but also the overall morale on the site a little. I think we managed to contain it but again - next time I run a competition it’ll not be based upon post numbers but rather some sort of quality level of interaction.

Overall I think the competition was well worthwhile. Yes, I made a few mistakes but I’ve learned a lot from it and am looking forward to the next one I will run.

Share This

http://www.problogger.net

Designing blogs is easy. Designing blogs in a unique way is hard. Whatever blog engine you are using, there are literally thousands of templates available which you can apply directly, without any significant code modifications. That’s efficient, but it’s not creative, because using a default blog-template you risk to end up with some wide-spread look which has actually nothing to do with you. To convey your personality effectively, you need a design which reflects who you are and what you are doing. That’s why important is not just what you post, but also how you post it.

In fact, beyond the template-design-culture exists a field of creative, individual and impressive blog designs. And the good thing about it is that this field has been rapidly growing over the last years. To celebrate the creativity of blog designers we regularly present reviews of excellent blog designs we have stumbled upon recently. This post is no exception. Below you’ll find 50 further examples of excellent, unique and impressive blog designs.

Apart from “usual” minimal designs, one can observe more rather complex graphic works. If earlier only blog headers had striking visual elements, now whole web-layouts seem to have become more vibrant: paper clips, mp3-players, coffee cups and further objects are used extensively. Apparently, they are used as metaphors for the environment of site designers. Such designs are just impossible to copy and they unite the visual design with the author’s content in a unique and very personal layout.

You can also have a look at our previous showcases:

• 45 More Excellent Blog Designs (February 2008)
• 30 More Excellent Blog Designs (November 2007)
• 45 Excellent Blog Designs (August 2007)

Excellent Blog Designs

Narfstuff
Perfect integration of visual elements in a standard 2-column blog structure. Artwork.

Viget Labs
A pretty, clean, light and fresh blog design.

Dollarshort
Informal yet looking professional, with moderate use of white space and light colors.

coda.coza
The sixth version of Damien du Toit’s blog. Grid in use.

Brad Frost’s Blog
A truly creative blog design. This blog contains “words that would otherwise be coming out of designer’s mouth”. Literally.

Missy
Trendy stripes gone wild. The colors just fit together.

Popstalin.com
Beautiful visual composition which includes date stamps with a bird, search box with a bird and a navigation with birds. The RSS-bird is orange, of course.

Nzrn.com
Sometimes less colors is more. A very nice grid-based site layout which is easy to scan and to read.

tehCpeng
Wood, coffee, ear phones. This blog reflects the habits of its owner.

Antiphrasis.com
A blog with a very intuitive structure; nothing can really confuse a visitor and the date stamps are pretty sweet!

Lucy Blackmore
An artistic blog design for a blogger-artist.

Design Reviver
A magazine style blog with its own way of presenting the overview of recent articles.

Clemente
Blog design meets vintage style. If you will ever need to design a blog in the vintage style, here is how you could do it.

Viget Labs
Sometimes background image is everything you really need for a distinctive design. However, this blog offers more. Notice how well design elements are executed — e.g. article headings.

Freelenz
Achieving an intuitive design in complex layout isn’t easy. Ewald Natter manages to get it right. Although the layout isn’t simple, it manages to remain scannable and readable.

Bits & Pixels
Vivid colors on dark background look sexy. Can you find a space invader?

creative briefing
Simplicity at its best. This design emphasizes the importance of typography. Visual elements aren’t really necessary.

Ollie Kavanagh
Here the content seems to “hang” in the air which is unusual and attractive. The design is remarkable.

The Superest
A blog doesn’t have to contain posts. Kevin Cornell and Matthew Sutter present their illustrations in their blog.

Distortion
The level of detail in this design is remarkable. Every single detail is taken care of. The layout may seem a little bit complex, but it is not. Very impressive.

Mike Poss’ Rock Guitar
Simple, clean and stylish.

Mancub
“Thin” blog design. The navigation menu at the top is pretty funky.

woork
Antonio Lupetti impresses with a very clean design and keen attention to details. Calm, clean and very user-friendly.

Four Labs
A 3-column-based blog design which is really distinctive from usual blog designs.

Sketchblog
Interesting combination of illustrations and navigation in a blog design.

Spadewerk
Unusual blog design solution: both the left and the right column of the blog have the same width. This looks unusual but somehow attractive.

Internet Zillionaire
Creative blog design in the old-magazine-look.

davor peic.gavran
A blog design in which everything perfectly fits together. Don’t miss the nice Flash-based language switcher at the top of the page.

Kristin Ascoop
A blog design with feminine touch from Holland.

Kohette Design Web
Quite unusual, rather experimental solution. The RSS-feed-icon at the top of the site is animated.

Guifx
Light and fresh design. The calendar seems to serve as the primary navigation.

Home Design Find
Photos, rulers and paper clips in use.

Jeux de Maux

yo vivo en vigo
This header is really hard to forget.

GlassHills - Web Design by Jackson Howell
A blog design with many curves, swirls, clouds, sun and a rising RSS-feed-icon.

Caty’s Blog
Apparently, Caty likes cats and small colorful illustrations.

Vectips
Simplicity meets white space meets fresh colors.

Revota
Maybe, there is a little bit too much noise on the page, but the way blog posts are presented is quite unusual.

I Am Neato
We don’t know who Neato is, but he seems to be really happy. Emilio Cavazos combines portfolio and blog on one page.

Susay
A vertical navigation menu in use.

Neweracaptalk
Instead of displaying excerpts of the latest posts, this blog first presents the titles of the posts and the latest forum posts.

Lisa Bettany
What does Lisa like? Right, photography and music. And where does she come from? Right, Canada. You see it immediately. That’s an effective use of visuals.

Moderno Prometeo
Similar ideas as in the previous design.

Pop Culture Tees
A t-shirt-blog in a pop-art-style.

Phil’s Proof
Ok, that’s probably too many details at once. But Phil doesn’t care. A really different blog design.

Alyssa Tucker
Summer colors for the summer mood. Can you find the swimming duck in the layout?

Catalyst Studios
A group-weblog with dozens of hand-drawn elements.

Dandelion Path
Sweet site navigation and sections labeling. All sections of the site are visible at one glance.

Nimbupani Designs

I Menestrelli

Stitchify
A unique blog design with a personal note.

http://www.smashingmagazine.com

Over the coming weeks and months I will be joining a team of bloggers to blog on the new ScribeFire blog. ScribeFire is a Firefox extension that allows you to blog from within your browser. They’ve just announced the release of version 2.1.

I’m going to be covering some similar topics to what I’m doing here at ProBlogger and will start off by looking at the topic of growing your blog’s readership.

You can see my first guest post which just went up at Would You Read Your Blog? The Secret to Building Traffic.

Share This