And there’s a very good reason why.

We start with a new idea, a single objective that the site is going to achieve. But as we progress with the development, we keep adding redundant bits of stuff, and completely unneeded elements.

So as a result, we create something that ends up being too many things, and having so many features it scares everyone away.

Take the social sharing icons on most blogs for example. Some blogs display a huge stack of sharing icons at the end of every post. Such bloat discourages sharing rather than encourage it. The right approach would be to display only what you really know would work. The retweet button anyone?

Next time you embark on a new project:

Think of what annoys you on other sites: and don’t do it on yours just for the sake of following the tradition.

Look at what you have so far: and re-evaluate its usefulness. Is it what the visitors come here looking for?

Don’t lose focus: don’t try to make your site do too many things. The more focused the objective, the better.

Simplify, not complicate: keeping things simple and intuitive is the way to go. The less steps your visitors have to take to get to the info/tool they need, the better.

Now, I don’t want to get redundant here myself. So I’ll let you mull over the above points.

And please, add your thoughts below.

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Do you work for yourself?

You may think you do. As a blogger, you have your own schedules, you write when you feel like it, you write about things you love and so on.

But that’s not what I mean when I ask if you really work for yourself.

Even though you have a blog and you do whatever you want to do with it, you’re still limited by certain choices. Do you rely on Google for traffic? Do you rely on a ad network to monetize your blog? Do you promote others’ products to make small commissions?

In all those situations, you work for others. In particular, you depend on others to monetize your blog, to make it profitable, and to make your efforts worthwhile.

Now, there’s certain trend in the blogosphere about making money from your blog. And it’s mostly made popular by certain lazy bloggers (pardon me but I’m NOT referring to you).

It’s so easy to slap Google AdSense code on your blog and wait for the pennies to trickle in. Most people don’t even think they have any other choice.

The best they do is change the advertising network.

There’s nothing wrong with making money from ads. But what you make with ads is nothing compared to what you can make when you work for yourself.

How do you work for yourself? You sell your own products and services.

The first step involves building a platform that you can use to sell your products.

Build a platform

You don’t just start a new blog. It’s easy to do, and anyone with internet access can do it. You build a platform.

Blogging is not immediately rewarding. It’s only rewarding when you establish yourself as authority in your niche. When you tell people something that’s true, that makes sense to them, and that affects their lives in a positive way.

Building authority and making your audience listen to you can not happen in a few days, or weeks, or even months (unless you have a lot of pals on Digg).

It’s going to take time and consistent posting by you to make your blog stand out.

If you rely solely on ads, your interest in blogging will slowly peter out… leaving you to wonder what did you gain from all the hard work you put into your blog.

When you have a long term goal in your mind, however, you can go on creating content and building authority till you’re ready to sell your expertise.

Sell your expertise

If you blog to build authority, you’ll not only gain more knowledge about your niche, but also establish yourself as a expert in your niche.

Your readers will have certain expectations from you. They’ll read you to gain insight into whatever they want to know.

And this, my friends, is the right time to start charging for your knowledge.

You DON’T have to charge  your readers for reading your blog of course, because frankly, they’re doing you a favor by reading you out of all other bloggers.

You can, however,  use your expertise, skill, and experience to put together a product or service that solves a big problem of your audience.

The product or service can be anything from a ebook, a interactive course, a tool, or just plain your consultation and advice.

Make partnerships

You’ll do just fine on your own. However, if you feel there are certain areas that lie outside your skillset, don’t hesitate to reach out to other people with skillset that fill in that gap for you.

As the saying goes, 1+1 make 11. A joint venture can be profitable for all parties involved, there will be less work, things will get done fast, and there will be better profits.

The web is reaching a critical stage for online publishers and entrepreneurs. People are more interested in buying online than they were ever before. They want to spend their money. So this is the right time for you to start selling and accept the money they are so willingly to put in your pocket.

Work for yourself and stop promoting others’ products. A year or two from now, the Internet is going to be so saturated with online sellers, you’ll have hard time fitting in. And you sure don’t want to be collecting pennies forever.

Act now!

At the end, I’ll ask the same question again: do YOU work for yourself?

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It’s hardly been over a week since I launched Spotlight WordPress Theme and I’ve already received plenty of positive feedback from everyone who saw and used the theme  (which also means the sales are going really good).

The good reviews and comments have been very encouraging. So, to continue the good spirit and give everyone back some love, I contacted few blogger friends and asked them to give away 3 copies of Spotlight to their readers.

Well, they couldn’t be happier.

Daniel at Daily Blog Tips is running a twitter contest for Spotlight WordPress Theme. To be one of the three lucky winners, all you have to do is follow Daniel on twitter, and tweet the following message:

Entering the Spotlight contest. If you want to participate, follow @danielscocco and re-tweet http://xr.com/spot1

Daniel will pick 3 random winners on Friday, and will get in touch with them to hand ‘em over a free copy of the theme.

My good friend Steven Snell is also holding a contest on his design resource blog Design Mag. This one is slightly easier. Leave a comment on the contest post and you automatically enter the contest.

Three winner will be picked randomly on Friday.

If you really like the theme and you don’t win a free license, don’t worry. Spotlight is still so cheap, you can get it with the leftover pennies in your wallet!

Stay subscribed for more offers and future themes.

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What do I achieve by cutting the  price to half? First, I want everyone to get this theme because it’s so good. People with low budget shouldn’t be left out. Secondly, it’s good from a seller’s perspective too. The lower the price, the more people are likely to buy it.

So what are you waiting for? Get your copy now. You don’t get such amazing offers everyday!

P.S. A couple of folks who have already bought the theme will get $29 back.

Link Code: d1928 - © Blogging Bits | Blog writing, marketing, and design

You heard me right folks! I’ve partnered with my friend Haris and have launched a new site dedicated to premium WordPress Themes over at Theme Sphere.

And the first theme is a very powerful combination of my tried and tested formulas that will make your competitors envy your web site/blog. The theme, of course, is called Spotlight.

Well, to cut a long story short, you GOT to check it out. I know you’ll be impressed.

Here are some of the best features of this powerful beast:

SEO: Be on the top in search engine result pages

With Spotlight, search engines will love your site. Enjoy high search engine rankings, higher click through rates, and exponential increase in visitors all without digging into theme code.

SMO: Pile up new subscribers with social media features

Out of the box social media optimization makes it easier for your visitors to submit your articles to social media sites, thus opening streams of new visitors from top social media sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, and Delicious. Spotlight also makes it incredibly easy for your fickle social media visitors to discover your best content, stay engaged, and keep coming back as loyal users.

Ad optimized: Make more money while you’re at

Whether you use AdSense, other ad networks, or sell ads directly, Spotlight has a solution for all your needs. Ads are placed in key places and blended into the theme in a way that your visitors are compelled to click on your ads. And a very intuitive Ads management backend puts it all under your command.

Take control of Spotlight with its robust backend

You can customize every bit of Spotlight using its powerful backend. From social media optimization to inserting ads on your site, you can activate every feature with just a single click.

Enjoy free unlimited support

Confused on how to install it? Not sure how to perform a certain task? Not to worry. Drop by our support forum and ask for help. Our experts along with Spotlight community will solve your problem in an instant.

Main Spotlight information page

Live demo

Buy Spotlight

P.S. Please help spread the word about Spotlight WordPress Theme. Need motivation? You can become a affiliate and earn money every time someone buys Spotlight from your referral link.

Your feedback is most welcome.

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How your website is designed can actually reveal a lot about you and your company.  The problem is – your website’s “look and feel” may not match the brand you’re trying to portray to your customers.

For example, how easy it is to get around your website?  Dropdown menus have long been used to pack a lot of information into a small space, but they also have the undesirable side effect of not being indexed by the search engines.  It might sound old-fashioned, but good old graphical buttons and text links still reign supreme when it comes to on-site optimization.

The font style you use can have an effect on your readers too.  Cursive fonts denote elegance and refinement, while blocky fonts showcase a solid, reputable and grounded company.  Look carefully at the typography used on your website.  Does it work for the type of message you’re trying to convey?

Even the colors used in your website can have some unintentional pros and cons.  For example, if you run a website about food, using warm, earthy tones like brown, orange and dark red can help stimulate appetite.  Cooler tones like blues and greens are widely regarded as “safe” colors and are generally favorable with international audiences too.

To find out more about what your website is subconsciously telling your visitors about you – and your business, think of three words you’d use to describe yourself.  That’s you, personally.  Not your website or your company – just yourself.  For example, I describe myself as:

1. Creative
2. Unique
3. Practical

Now you try it.  Three words to describe yourself.  Got your list?  Good.  Now go to your website.

How well does your list match with what you see?  If your website is throwing you mixed signals, you can bet it’s doing the same to your visitors – and possibly costing you sales as a result.

Being able to take a good honest look at your website and see how well it blends with your personality and your business is crucial to building a brand that lasts.  In my case, I want people to know that the person behind iElectrify is not your average designer, but someone who’s willing to help you create a brand and a site worth promoting.

Design is serious business, and having a design that matches well with your personality and goals is what gets people to take your business seriously.

Good luck!

P.S. If you enjoyed reading this article, you can find even more web design tips at iElectrify

Sherice Jacob specializes in creating professional, affordable and creative websites that get results.  With a strong background in internet marketing and niche marketing, Sherice works with small to medium-sized businesses to help them easily create and manage their own websites.

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With AdSense for feeds you can run AdSense in your feeds just like you do on your blog/website, with almost as much control over the appearance and position of ads as you are used to having in AdSense for content.

But to use AdSense for feeds, you need to migrate you Feedburner account to your Google account, which is currently a manual process. That is, you have to email Google at adsense-support-aff@google.com and provide following info with the request to migrate your account:

• Your FeedBurner account username
• The Google Account email address you use to sign in to AdSense

Head over to Google help center for more info.

I can see those huge blogs with many thousands of subscribers making even more money with AdSense for feeds.

And hey, I’ve never placed AdSense on Blogging Bits, but I’m considering giving AdSense for feeds a try as it seems less annoying compared to on-site ads. What do you think?

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And no matter how good you are at what you do, if you aren’t passionate about what you sell, your target market will know you aren’t being honest with them.

Who are scammers after all? The fellas who try to sell something to you without respecting your privacy, comfort, and your pocket. The only thing they are passionate about is YOUR money. And then there are hardcore scammers and small time scammers and people who claim and try to be honest with you but smell like scammers.

Fact is that anybody who is trying to sell something is bound to employ selling techniques that will annoy some people. There’s no way you can please everyone. For there are people out there who just don’t want to pay no matter what.

Most bloggers I’ve met or talked to are passionate about what they write. But they are also looking to make some bucks with the knowledge they so generously share and the time and effort they dedicate to blogging.

The problem with most bloggers trying to actually sell something to their readers is that they don’t have enough expertise in the area of selling. So they end up running out of passion as they continuously remain unable to make substantial income from their products.

They are either too mellow to convince their audience that their product is worth buying, or so aggressive that people become wary of them.

So if you are one of those bloggers, here are some basic tips for you to leverage your knowledge in a way that you can sell your products without confusing or scaring your potential customers off.

Know what your audience wants – Your audience has needs that you can satisfy. Creating a generic product isn’t going to be enough for them to make a buying decision. Find that burning need and create a hot product that caters to that particular need.

Don’t underestimate the appearance – If your product has an appearance (for example the UI of a software) don’t keep it too ugly to be worth having a second look. Remember that beautiful things has a way to attract our hearts (or call it irrational desires). When we see a beautiful gadget, we start finding an excuse to buy it and make it ours. And this is where even a slightly useful gadget can push us to go ahead with the purchase.

All of Apple’s products and especially iPhone is a living proof that looks matter. There are many phones better than iPhone but iPhone is simply better looking than most, and that’s what makes many people buy it.

Simplify your message – Don’t consider your audience to be fools, and don’t overhype your product. Write your sales message in simple, to the point and professional language (and by this, I don’t mean that you use tight, formal language. That isn’t professional, that’s just scary).

Be the best in the business – Create the best product you can. Give the best bang for the buck. Provide the best support. And treat your customers as the best people in the world. Do this and your customers will do the best kind of marketing for you free of charge!

Keep improving – You can not create a near perfect product at very first try. It’s bound to have glitches, flaws, and bugs. So don’t be lazy and keep improving your product. Make use of your customers’ feedback and add new features at every update. Don’t let the buzz die. Keep surprising your customers with your ingenuity.

Have you ever sold anything? Please share your experience and tips in comments.

Link Code: d1928 - © Blogging Bits | Blog writing, marketing, and design

AdSense is the choice of many when it comes to monetisation. It’s used by starters and pros alike. While there’s a lot written about it on the net and offline, I’m here today to share a few of my tried and tested tips and help you make the most of your ad space. Since this information comes right off my several years of experience as a professional blogger and web-developer, it would be fair to say that these are the lesser known tips of the trade.

First a little background. Many of us would already be familiar with the Adsense heatmap. It is basically a schematic of the regions of a web page most likely to receive visitor clicks. Essentially, these are the regions which are better suited for placing the ads on a site. So take a good look at the figure and keep it handy for the rest of this article.

The Tools

AdSense heatmap has been created after studying several thousands of web-pages on the net. Thus it is a generalized diagram relevant to the common generic layout. It does not take into account the site layout, theme, or design, the type of audience or the age and popularity of a particular website. So we would first need the tools to create and understand the heatmap of your individual site.

Those who have purchased web hosting can grab this gem called clickheat from labsmedia. Follow their directions to install it on your server. Those on a free hosting or not having access to the server can make use of CrazyEgg which is a paid service and a more polished version of a similar technique. If I were you, I’d choose to pay for the hosting rather than CrazyEgg (for obvious reasons). Both these tools let you generate the heatmap of your site on a periodic basis like daily, monthly or custom defined.

Second tool (as you might have guessed by now) is Google Analytics. While Google Analytics serves a lot of purposes, we have two main intents for its use here. It will help us understand our visitors better. And hidden deep within the various views is the site overlay view under click patterns to help you see the clicks as GA sees it. This does not show the clicks over regions where Adsense is installed. But it is perfectly usable and will work in tandem with the above mentioned tools to point out the anomalies if any.

Questions you need to ask yourself

Now that you have a heatmap of the site, its will guide you in finding the locations which are best suited for ad placement. It is now time to focus on the other aspects of revenue generation. Before you begin, there are several questions you need to answer:

• How old is your site or blog?

If you have a new site that means you may be having less visitors and will also be trying to build a rapport.

• What kind of audience does your site cater to? The average or the ones following your niche?

If you cater to a generic audience, there are higher chances of visitors interacting (read clicking) ads. Visitors following a niche could be too smart to interact with ads against their choice.

• What’s the design or theme and the layout of your site? Is it a dull generic theme or a more polished and professional theme?

If you have a generic theme or less styled HTML, blending the ads is easier and they could very well be taken for content by the casual reader. A professional theme’s elegance will make the ads stand out more (as compared to the unstyled content).

• What would be high on your priority? User-experience or revenue?

This could be a tough one especially if you are starting out. Its an art to make user-experience and revenue go hand in hand.

When to Blend

Most of the publishers who do well with AdSense are those with a generic unpolished theme on their site with ads blended and obfuscated in the content. You may notice that these publishers form a considerable majority of those featured on the “Inside Adsense” blog in the success stories. This is one reason why blended ads work so very well with the unsuspecting visitor and another reason for the high popularity of the large rectangle format – it just looks so much like the actual content. Link ads could go into the site navigation and referrals in the left sidebar top section.
On the flip side, this strategy will certainly cost you the visitors and subscribers while setting an example of bad user experience. So my two cents, balance it out. Leave a generous margin around your ads if you are blending. As you continue to make revenue and draw more visitors on your site, you will transition into the next level (that everyone aspires to).

When to make the ads stand out

Generally speaking, if your site has been around for a while, it must be getting visitors (depending on how much time you spend sharing your passion with them). The majority of the visitors would be the ones following your site on a regular basis. Getting these visitors to interact with blended ads usually doesn’t work since they are familiar with the site and can differentiate between the ads and the content. These visitors are the loyal ones, are the biggest asset of your site and have to be cared for. Its time to evolve your strategy and take a wise decision.

An easier thing would be to just keep changing layouts every once in a while. But a wise decision would be to take your user-experience and monetisation strategy to the next level. Time to give your site a much deserved redesign. Design your site for the smart visitors and target premium advertisers. And while you are doing so, make the ads noticeable (and standout as ads instead of content). This translates into higher user experience and more subscribers while being more appealing to the first-time visitors. Visitors will have a choice to interact with the ads since they recognize them and do so by choice. And this will in-turn mean higher conversion rate for the advertisers. Theme your text ads to compliment the theme. Its a win-win situation for everyone. The big difference now is that you are ready to pitch to advertisers directly.

Mistakes

Both the above strategies worked for me but your mileage may vary. So post regularly and keep your site updated. As a bonus I’d share with you a few mistakes I made to learn things the hard way to help you make a better decision.

I started my site with a polished and elegant theme. Visitors were few and they could make out the ads. Thus there was no revenue at all. I continued to create good content and revenue increased marginally. I then changed over to a minimalist theme with a raw, newspaper like look and feel. It worked like a charm.

Almost six months down the line while the visitors were glued to the content, I redesigned the site and now I have a more professional look to the site. The number of visitors and subscribers has increased substantially and I’m ready to pitch to advertisers directly.

Conclusion

There though are a few things that can’t be left unsaid before we conclude. The only thing that will continue to invite visitors and advertisers is the content and its inflow. Good content once in a blue-moon is not enough and so is average content at regular intervals. In order to make money you need to set out to make meaningas Guy Kawasaki pitches for in The Art Of The Start.

Image Courtesy (Creative Commons) : Akira Ohgaki

Link Code: d1928 - © Blogging Bits | Blog writing, marketing, and design

What sort of ads does your blog have? Let me guess… It’s an odd combination of AdSense, Kontera, AdBrite, and other ad networks, which add clutter to your blog and straddle the border between “tolerable” and “That’s it, I’m installing AdBlock.” Sure, it’s easy to slap some JavaScript snippets into your template and be done with it, but it’s not the best way to handle things. If your blog is new, then you won’t have much choice but to go with AdSense. But as the site grows, you may find it limiting, as you may with most ad networks.

• The ads are often for spammy sites, or of otherwise low quality.
• Ad networks take a cut of the profit. AdSense doesn’t disclose their cut, though most networks range from 25%-50%. (It’s suspected that Google takes roughly a 20% cut.)
• With Pay-Per-Click networks, you’re depending on people clicking on the ads in order to get any money. This often leads to the ads becoming more intrusive than necessary as they must be placed inside content areas in order to achieve a descent click-through rate.
• PPC ad blocks, Kontera links (shudder), and other ad network units get in the way and clutter things up.

In contrast to network-based advertisements, you have what are called “direct-sale” ads. The general idea of direct ads is that you’re cutting the “middleman” out of the equation by selling ads directly to businesses instead of relying on a network.

This isn’t a passive solution, like AdSense, though. You have to actively seek-out businesses and ask them if they would be interested in advertising on your site. You can email companies that fit your blog’s topic, and you can post advertisements that you have ad space available (what a concept! ) on marketplaces such as SitePoint.

After nuking your network ads, you will hopefully have a nice, clean blog. The next step is to decide what ad formats you’ll offer, and where they will be positioned. A popular ad format among tech blogs is the 125×125 ad. It’s compact, it doesn’t look too “ad-like,” and people tend to look at them. You can also fit 4-6 of them in a fairly small space. I have a few on Webmaster-Source, and I like they way they’re noticeable, yet out of the way.

Then you have the classic 468×60 banner, which could be the oldest ad format on the internet. Designers Toolbox has a list of standard banner sizes, or if you have sizable enough traffic levels, you could invent your own custom format, like Smashing Magazine has done.

Put some dummy “Your Ad Here” images up where the ads will be, and link them to a static page with some site statistics (traffic, subscribers, any notes of interest) and contact information. Oh, and your rates, of course. Note how many ad slots are available, what formats they are, etc. How much should you charge? There isn’t a magic formula to calculate that, unfortunately. It depends on your niche, the age and traffic of the blog, the size and position of the ads, and probably other factors as well. You may find it useful to know that

• Bigger = more money. Charge more for a large banner than you would for a 125×125 button ad.
• Position is key. An ad is “better” if it’s above the fold (visible on screen without scrolling) than if it’s lower down.
• Less is more, quality over quantity. The more ads you have, the less they’re probably worth. If you have less ad slots (say four 125×125 ads and a banner rather than two standard banners, a 300 pixel wide square ad, and a “leaderboard” banner) they will have a higher value, theoretically. Also, you want to avoid having too many ads anyway. Otherwise you end up with a cluttered blog.

You’ll have to experiment with pricing. It helps if there are other blogs in your niche direct-selling ads. That way you can check their prices and traffic statistics, and factor them into your fuzzy math as you try to decide how much to charge.

Direct-sale ads aren’t new, as some may suspect. Back in the early days of the web, before there were any ad networks, that was how online advertising was done. Direct sales are a great way to monetize your website without looking like someone who has just discovered the wonders of Google AdSense. I’ve been selling direct ads on my blog for a few months now, and I’m seeing good results. If you want to learn even more about direct ad sales, I encourage you to read my post 125×125 Ads: Monetize Your Blog With the Bloggers’ Ad Format. Consider it your obligatory “further reading” section.

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