Blogging is still something that many people find difficult to make any money from. Many internet marketers know that they should have a blog, but do not really know the exact steps to starting one – and then making it profitable. Finally there is a step-by-step guide that shows you the exact steps you have to take to make your own blog and start making an income. Right from deciding upon a niche that sells, to choosing a domain name to making your blog quickly indexed and also very secure to making money.

And it’s all clearly explained in a step-by-step approach with screen shots and videos. You simply cannot go wrong.

It has not been around for that long, but people are already praising this new free blogging guide…

“I downloaded the free guide yesterday. Today, my blog is up and running. Excluding the wait for the hosting to be set up, it took me 38 minutes!”

“I’ve had my domain for a while, I hadn’t managed to get my head around wordpress installation. Following your very clear instructions, I’ve installed the blog myself in about an hour. So, that’s exciting, and impressive, I reckon.”

Contained in this blogging guide are some essential tips for the things that you must know. When I first started with a blog it was a lot of hit and miss. It still is! I wish I would have had something like this blogging guide when I started. The learning curve would have been much less – and much less painful! This guide tells you how to…

- The 2-step process you need to choose a proven money-making niche…get it wrong and you’ll never make any money

- The 3 golden rules of keyword analysis…get one rule wrong and ALL your future efforts are wasted.

- The exact step-by-step methods to find the best domain name for your blog …99% of bloggers miss this crucial “Search Engine Optimization” step

- How to install WordPress in under 1 minute (as long as you choose the right hosting company)

- Step-by-step guides and images of each ‘must-have’ plugin you must install on your blog (plus all the tweaks necessary – it is not just a matter of installing)

- The 2 steps you need to take to get Google to index your blog…and don’t believe all the hype…they take no more than 10 minutes to complete

- Don’t be one of those blog owners whose blog is ‘hacked…follow these 6 tasks that keep 99% of hackers at bay

- How to add pages, posts and images the right way, to pick up Google “link-juice” and without being penalised for duplicate content

- To launch your blog, what’s the optimum number of blog posts you should have? The answer may surprise you.

- How to write blogs posts so that your visitors think “I like this person, they know what they are talking about. I wonder what else they have to say” …and return time and time again

- How to write a good title for a blog post and why “Here are the top 20 tips for XXXX” is a no-no.

- The 5 quickest and easiest ways to start making a blog income…including the step-by-step approach

- How to split your working day into the 3 crucial elements of making money via blogging

- The 3 traits of a successful blogger…do you have them?

Then grab the free guide by clicking here:

Products that have Private Label Rights with them are becoming quite popular again. There is a reason for it. PLR products make it much easier to get some content to use for more traffic, new opt in sign ups, or for an entry level product to sell yourself.

I am going to be talking a lot more about PLR products soon in a comprehensive guide to using PLR products to make more money online. Until then, here is a cool little video and an amazing offer about PLR products and how to make more money with them!

8 Ways To Make More Money Online With PLR Products!

As I said, I am currently working on a comprehensive tutorial that will show you everything you need to know about working with PLR products. It will not be an ebook, or some other type of downloadable. However, it is going to be a blog series that I am going to turn into a member site with new PLR products added each week. Stay tuned for that.

In the meantime….

I came across an amazing PLR Products package today that is simply ridiculous. Check out Russell’s Mega Pack III Private Label Rights.

Niche marketing, when you are an affiliate marketer, is the way to create ongoing commissions.

When working with affiliate programs, one of the ways that many marketers reach such high levels of commissions is to focus on one particular niche – topic, product, theme, industry, etc. – and drive traffic that is interested in that one niche to their website. Populating your website with great content will keep these visitors coming back to see what else they can learn about this niche.

Niche Marketing And You

The trick to making niche marketing work for you is to choose something that you are passionate about. This is something that I had to learn the hard way. While it should be quite obvious, it wasn’t. I fell into the trap of creating sites for the “hot” products instead of building sites around those niches I was passionate about, knew a lot about, or wanted to know more about. It took some resources from Sitesell.com to change my way of thinking. In fact, it wasn’t until I read their flagship ebook – Make Your Site Sell – that I really figured things out about niche marketing.

Niche Marketing Example

One of the ways that I have found that makes learning easier is to find an example. This is especially true for niche marketing. Here is a quick video of a niche marketer and how they put it all together.

Niche Marketing Success Tips

Think niche marketing is something you want to do? Here are some quick success tips.

1. Choose a niche YOU are passionate about – This could be anything from apple growing to zebra care.

2. Create Your Content – This can be in the form of articles, ebooks, reports, videos, audios, pictures, whatever you can think of to grow your website.

3. Keep It Simple – Write your content in a personal style. Many of the most successful niche marketing sites are blogs where the author is speaking to their audience like they are all old friends. Works everytime!

4. Be Different – One of the major hallmarks of niche marketing is to provide something new to the audience.

5. Stay With It – I have known many aspiring affiliate marketers who have quite their affiliate marketing business just when it was about to explode. The waiting was too much. This is the main reason marketing a product, or creating content, on something that you love is so important. You will be able to stay with it much longer.

What do you think? Are you ready for niche marketing?

I recently came across a free membership site that is offering free private label and resell rights products. I have to admit, I haven’t done anything with this type of marketing in a very, very long time. I got started with affiliate marketing and then resell rights (Jimmy D. Brown products mostly), but have not really been active in it since like 2000.

If you don’t know what Private Label or Resell Rights products are, they are a cross between having your own product and affiliate marketing. You either buy the rights to a membership site that provides these types of products on a monthly basis, or buy products outright like in private label articles. Once you sell them you keep the profits instead of just receiving a commission. But, the process to sell them, or give them away, is basically the same as affiliate marketing.

Today I saw a tweet from ArticlesBin that mentioned a free membership site that gives away free PLR and resell right products. Since I’m always looking for free incentives I was intrigued. So I took a look at it. Even with a hint of skepticism.

However, I do have to say that Mark Austin (the owner of the membership site) has put together a pretty neat little concept here. With the free membership to the site you can get access to;

Instant access to over 153 hot selling PLR/RR digital products worth hundreds of dollars!

Two hot new products each and every week with either Private Label Rights or Resale Rights!

Instant access to over 10,740+ Private Label Rights articles!

Instant access to 330+ free tools that will help your web business be more profitable!

Instant access to the Resell Rights Weekly Members Forum!

Two things stood out to me that might make this worthwhile.

First, the amount of free products that I can use as either incentives (for myself or for clients). After taking a quick look through them, this is a pretty good list.

Second, the free forum access. This is always worth it’s weight in gold. A forum is a great place to meet people, learn new things, and even promote yourself a little.

I think Mark Austin’s Resell Rights Weekly is a pretty good membership site. It’s organized and has great products for any info-marketer. Go ahead and check it out.

Affiliate marketing can be very fulfilling or very frustrating. There are incredible highs and rock bottom lows. But, the journey of affiliate marketing is oh so much fun. And like any journey you need the right equipment to get to your destination. In affiliate marketing one piece of equipment that you do need is a landing page.

A landing page is simply a one, or maybe two, page website where you funnel all your traffic to. Every link, every article, every social network, every ppc ad is directed to this one simple page. You’re being an air traffic controller and directing each and every plane to your landing strip.

On a landing page there are usually a few different other pieces of equipment that help you build a rather healthy affiliate income. Opt-in list sign up, free ebook, video, audio, and maybe some reviews and comparisons of similar products are all examples of what you can find on the landing page. All great tools to use in converting all that traffic to commissions. But, the problem with landing pages is that sometimes people just don’t think you need to have one.

Do you need a landing page for affiliate marketing?

In almost every case, I would say that when marketing products as an affiliate you should have a series of landing pages working for you to convert traffic to profit. I say almost every instance, because there are always exceptions to every rule.

However, the fact remains that in affiliate marketing, a valuable – must have- piece of your overall advertising campaign is a landing page. Why? Why are they so important?

1. Landing pages give you a base of operations. This is very important when you want to drive a point home about you, the product you are advertising, and how it will benefit the visitor. You want one page to do all that. Landing pages are also great for use in social networking. You can send all the traffic from people looking at your profile to this page also.

2. Landing pages are incredible list builders. When you are in affiliate marketing one of your greatest assets is your mailing list. Landing pages build them for you. By giving away a free ebook, or access to “special privileged” videos or even “insider” coupons are great incentives for people to sign up for your mailing list.

3. Landing pages give you a place for your voice. Your landing page is where you can differentiate yourself from the rest of the pack. If you are into network marketing then this is especially important for you. When there are a lot of different people advertising the same thing – with the same supplied landing page – the effectiveness of it goes down. But, different ones, with different information, different voices drive results sky high.

4. Landing pages can be easily changed and tested. The great thing about a one page, or two page site is that they don’t take that long to create. (And with the new Affiliate Theme product for Wordpress, landing pages are incredibly simple to make.) And they are easily tested and changed. It wouldn’t take too much time to create two to three different landing pages for testing with PPC, or even article marketing, to see which one converts more. Or, you can keep them for different target audiences.

5. Landing pages pre-sell your visitor. This is something I have heavily reinforced with my clients and their advertising. Pre-Selling was made mainstream by Ken Evoy of SiteSell.com. And it works. You can’t expect someone to see a PPC ad and automatically want to buy. They need a little coaxing first. Landing pages can do that.

Landing Pages Should Also Be Well Designed

A major problem with most affiliates is that they just don’t know how to create all these landing pages, embed videos, design graphics, and write copy to pre-sell each visitor. While landing pages can be easy to churn out, it can be quite intimidating. Especially considering their importance.

It is just common sense to realize that if you are sending visitors to a poorly designed, hard to read or understand landing page not much is going to happen in the way of sign ups or clickthrus. Not a good thing.

So, you must take some time to present an appealing landing page to the visitor to achieve the maximum results.

1. Landing pages should have a striking header graphic. This is where you grab the attention of the visitor immediately. The graphic should be big, bold and contain colors that are pleasing to the eye.

2. Landing pages should have big, bold headings. After the graphic your words are going to pull the visitor in. The first ones they usually read are contained in your heading text. Make them good.

3. Landing pages should contain an incentive right off the bat. Get your visitor thinking about what is in this visit for them. Let them know what you are offering.

4. Landing pages should contain some sort of picture, or video, that will further instill desire. Video is the affiliate tool right now. I suggest using it and making it visible almost immediately.

5. Landing pages should be easily understood and navigable. Cluttered up pages, and hard to understand copy will cause people to leave and never return.

6. Landing pages should contain a big call to action. Hey, you want them there for a reason. Don’t be shy about asking for what you want.

Affiliate marketing is made a lot simpler with landing pages. And now with some great landing page tools that practically do the entire design for you there is no reason why you are not pumping out landing pages for each of your offers.

Don’t be intimidated by the “shoulds” and “needs” of a landing page. Just dive in and start using them.

In affiliate marketing there are some things that you simply must do. Included in that is creating focus specific webpages, more commonly referred to as landing pages, to present the product. This is especially helpful, and even mandatory, with PPC campaigns.

The problem has always been that you have to have actually know how to create those landing pages. A lot of people don’t. However, a brand new product has been launched to help take away most of the stress of having to create your own landing pages from scratch. Unique Blog Designs has actually made affiliate marketing much easier.

If you are using Wordpress to help make your websites then take a look at this quick video.

Affiliate Theme from Unique Blog Designs on Vimeo.

What you have just seen is pretty much the coolest Wordpress affiliate tool ever created. I am stunned at the possibilities now open to people who otherwise might have given up too soon because of the demands in creating affiliate pages. If you already know how to create your own pages, then maybe this isn’t for you, but if you don’t have a clue about html, css, or other design elements, Affiliate Theme is definitely the must have affiliate product. I don’t say that about a lot of things. Only a few times in my career have I ever said something is must have.

With Affiliate Theme you can easily create your affiliate landing pages and choose from over 20 different layouts. You can change the way your site looks with just the click of your mouse! The limits to this are endless.

Affiliates everywhere have been given an amazing opportunity with Affiliate Theme. I’m done talking about it… you’re going to have to check it out to see for yourself.

I’ve just received an email from Gideon Shalwick and Yaro Starak about their newest resource for internet marketers. It’s called Become A Blogger.com and is a compilation of ten free videos that take you step by step into creating your own blog. The videos themselves are good and provide great information for people who have never set up a blog before.

The topics of the videos include;

Why You Should Use Wordpress
How to Get Your Own Domain Name
How to Get a Webhost
How to Install Wordpress
How to Upload File to Your Webhost Using FTP
Choosing a Wordpress Theme For Your New Blog
How to Install And Use Wordpress Plugins.
How to Create Your First Blog Post and Blog Page
What RSS Is And Why You Need It
How To Use Feedburner For Supercharging Your RSS Capabilities

All in all a great free tutorial on how to get your blog set up and going quickly and easily.

Free Blogging Report

Also while you’re there watching the free blogging videos you can also sign up for Gideon and Yarak’s free report on blogging.

If you haven’t seen any other other parts of this series of Reviews for ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income you can catch up them by starting the book review here.

This post we are going to see what chapters 4, 5, and 6 have to offer.

Writing your blog

After you get through the technical aspects of blogging, chapter 4 begins the real “meat” of the book. We begin to finally learn what the title suggests… the secrets to making money with blogging.

Chapter 4 is all about how to write on your blog. The one thing I did like about this, and Chris and Darren, is their commitment to content. The chapter starts out with the most important thing you’ll learn in the entire book. The first statement is “Much has been written on what makes a blog successful, but all experts agree that central to all great blogs in one element: great content.” If you get nothing else out of this book… keep that nugget of truth close to the front of your mind.

The chapter goes on to explain just what good content is. The authors admit that great content is pretty relative, “Good content will vary from person to person depending upon their needs, the topic they are talking about, and perhaps even a person’s ethics“, they do consider some universal traits to good content.

The chapter goes on to talk about good writing tips, tips for writing titles, post length (which is great info for bloggers of any experience) and frequency, and finishes with a great section on 20 types of blog posts. I know I’ll be referring to this part frequently.

This was a great chapter and worth the cost of the book alone.

Making money with your blog

After learning how to write a blog post, Chris takes over and begins to set the stage on the actual monetization methods of blogging. He begins by making a great point. There are several different ways to make money with a blog. Each blogger will have their own ways, but there are some guidelines to follow.

The sections include;

A lot of info on how to make money is crammed into this chapter. But, more specifically the “where” and the “what to do” parts of making money from your blog.

Buying and Selling Blogs

This is something that I really don’t have much interest in. That doesn’t mean that this chapter was useless. I learned a lot about the business of buying and selling blogs and if I ever wanted to try this then I know I’ll be picking apart this section.

Some of the information includes;

Like I said, I’m not sold on the whole buying and selling of blogs. But, I do know that there are a lot of people doing it and are making an incredible income from it. To me, this is the chapter that I didn’t get a lot out of, but might be going back to later.

Thoughts so far…

So far I am pretty impressed with the book. I think that Darren and Chris really want to get some relevant, useful information into the hands of people that think they might want to try blogging as a source of income.

I do feel that experience bloggers probably won’t learn anything earth shattering in the first few chapters, new bloggers are in for a great treat. That doesn’t mean that experienced bloggers shouldn’t pick up a copy. I know that as I read things that I already knew were reinforced and new ideas started to churn. So far… a great investment and enjoyable book.

It’s been a little while since I last commented on the newest book by probloggers Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett, “ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income” So I’ll be making up for it with the remainder of these posts by reviewing several chapters at a time and then ending it off with my final thoughts.

This post I’m going to concentrate on chapters two and three. The ProBlogger book can almost be called an encyclopedia, or wiki in book form, of “how to” in blogging. To get to the money making part you have to go through some of the “how to’s” of blogging. That includes choosing your blogs topic and setting up your first blog.

Chapters 2 and 3 deal with these topics. I have to admit that I pretty much skimmed these chapters. After setting up several blogs, covering various topics, I think I know how to choose my niche and set up my blog.

That doesn’t mean that there isn’t anything useful here. If you are just getting into blogging, are struggling with all the “niche” stuff, and need a great reference point to starting, then this is as good as it gets.

Blogging 101

Chapter 2 covers the whole “Niche Blogging”. There is some good information in here that I agree with and a little bit that I don’t particularly agree with. Two things that is brought out in this chapter is really the foundation of blogging… be focused and be unique and useful.

I agree with both of those thoughts.

However, there is a place where I do have to disagree a little bit with the authors. I don’t agree with the philosophy of choosing the “next big thing” as a niche for your blog. I feel that this type of thinking actually contradicts the previous section on choosing niches you like and have a passion for.

The chapter ends with a great section of tools to help you find a niche. Again, I take caution with this just for the fact that if you’re just looking for the “next big thing” to blog about you’re spending more time chasing the rainbow than you are enjoying the pot of gold.

A great chapter for introductory blogging and one that anyone starting to blog should read.

Chapter 3 is dedicated to choosing blogging platforms and instructions for setting up your blog. Topics include;

The information was pretty comprehensive and you can see that it covered a lot of area. But, the way it was written made for fairly easy reading. Like I said previously, I have already set up several of my own, and hundreds of client blogs, so I pretty much skipped over this part. One section that was particularly helpful though was the section on blog design. I abhor code and only know enough to get by. Everything else is outsourced to someone who knows what they’re doing. But, this section contained some good stuff that I will probably refer back to.

Introductory blogging but worth the read

These two chapters were pretty basic and meant for beginners. I would not discount them as totally useless though. It never hurts to go over things we think we already know. New things always pop up and inspiration can usually be found. If you’re a beginner at blogging these chapters are invaluable. You will be referring to them often until you get use to blogging.

Pick up your copy of ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income today.

I received my copy of the newly published book by Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett yesterday afternoon. I must admit I have high expectations for this book. I have been following both of these high profile bloggers for some time and really appreciate, and respect, what they do. I believe their main goal is not the actual money that can be made with blogging, but in helping others do what they do.

With that premise in mind, and my expectations for the book, I opened up to the Introduction.

Initial Reaction

Here’s some initial thoughts as I began to read.

Problogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income

As stated already, I have very high expectations for this book. Is that fair? Should I go into this with the high expectations that I have? Probably not. But, I do… so let’s move on.

Chapter 1 is titled “Blogging for Money” and is an overview of what blogging is and what you can learn about more of in the rest of the book. You’ll definitely see the blogging style of writing in this first chapter. Subheadings, bullets, and screenshots are all a blogging norm. This style helps me personally as I read several books every month and like to get through them fast. I frequently skim the material and this style very much helps with that.

Darren and Christ touch on a lot of stuff in this chapter. If you’re not a blogger, don’t know where to start, or never heard of it before this chapter spells it out pretty good. There are two main emphasis I picked up in this chapter.

1.) Blogging is a website but in order to profit from it there must be value. The authors write, “the key thing is that readers get value out of it. Anyone who has been reading blogs for a while, though, will know there is more to blogging than just publising any old website.” I think that’s a major emphasis that can’t be taken lightly, especially if you’re blogging for money.

2.) Blogging is not a get-rich-quick scheme. Darren and Chris really want to make this clear. I have read several posts on ProBlogger.net about this very topic. Again, the authors point out that, “You do not just become a professional blogger overnight any more than you just instantly become a professional golfer.”

Two very strong points that prove to me that this book isn’t just about selling books. It’s about getting real information out to those that are serious about blogging for money.

Blogging monetization and other methods explained

The rest of Chapter 1 touches on several topics surrounding how how monetize your blog, different definitions, RSS and email, and what blogging strategies are available. While I won’t go into them here in this review (you’ll have to buy the book), I will say that Darren and Chris did a great job giving clear and concise explanations.

All in all, a great chapter. One that beginner, and even veteran, bloggers will find good information in. So far, my expectations are being met. Not just in the information, but in the overall “heart” of the book. I hope it continues.