Posted by karooch on
April 30, 2009
Where Do Blog Readers Come From?
I’m running a little experiment and I hope you’ll help me with it.
I’d like to know how you found Scraps of Mind. Out of all the squillions of sites on the Internet, what brought you to Scraps of Mind?
I’ve been using Entrecard for 9 months now and I know that it has brought a lot of new traffic to Scraps of Mind.
But I think that most of that traffic is ‘drop and run’ rather than long term readers. The way Entrecard works tends to encourage that.
So I wanted to see where Scraps of Mind readers actually came here from.
Please help me out by doing the survey below.
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I stopped dropping on Entrecard about a week ago and of course I experienced a dramatic traffic reduction. And I figure that now all the folk who were ‘drop and run’ have pretty much left because I haven’t dropped on them.
So if I get a significant percentage of readers who found Scraps of Mind through Entrecard and have stayed around then I will happily be proved wrong in my theory.
Given that only a small number of people usually complete a survey compared to the total number of readers, the percentage will be the deciding factor.
I think all bloggers wonder about their readership. Are they interested in what you write? Do they actually read it? How did they find you?
And if you are a blogger then the results of this survey should be a help to you too.
So please help me by selecting which option fits you.
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Posted by karooch on
April 27, 2009
Turn your Craft into a Business
I’ve talked to you before about Yaro Starak (of Blog Mastermind fame).
Well, now Yaro is teaching how to set up a membership site just like the Blog Mastermind teaching program so you can turn your own passion into a business.
This is something that many people in the craft world dream of.
Being able to run your own race. Work your own hours and fit around the other parts of your life.
And to be doing something you love at the same time.
If you think that setting up a Membership Site might just be the way to fulfill those dreams then you absolutely have to read Yaro’s new FREE report called the Membership Site Masterplan.
This report has just been released today and as you would guess, it is a step-by-step guide for launching a profitable online membership site.
You can download the Membership Site Masterplan from here
Having done his previous course on blogging, I have to tell you Yaro’s a great teacher and writer, and whenever he releases a report people always eagerly await what he has to say.
His gift is the ability to take complex subjects and make them very easy to understand. As you will see in this report, Yaro makes the process of setting up and profiting from a membership site so easy, anyone can do it, including you.
The Masterplan is packed full of CONTENT.
It’s not some hype-filled document just designed to sell a product and not really teach you anything.
In the Masterplan Yaro explains how he was able to make $250,000 from just one membership site and then goes on to lay out a plan so you can launch your own membership site.
This is the sort of stuff you’ll find in the report:
- How to find topics for a membership site
- How to develop pre-eminence, which means people
choose to join your membership site over all the
other options - What sources of traffic Yaro uses to bring
members to his site and build his list - What technology Yaro uses to deliver content
(this is so simple, anyone can do it) - How to make money from a membership site BEFORE
you create the content for it - How to fill your membership site with hundreds
of new members in a matter of days by conducting a
powerful, yet simple, launch campaign - and heaps more…
You can download the Masterplan here
This report is amazingly comprehensive and covers all you need to know to set up your own membership site. It’s hard to believe that Yaro’s willing to give this information away.
Naturally Yaro hasn’t put all this work into the report for nothing. He’s launching a training program next week and this report is designed to introduce you to his teachings.
But the Membership Site Masterplan is a complete document. And no matter whether you decide to join Yaro’s program or not, you will benefit greatly from this report if you are interested in setting up a profitable Internet business.
If you’re thinking of selling something online, a membership site is definitely the top choice. It’s a product that you sell once, yet continues to deliver income month after month, so it’s by far the best business model.
But hey, you don’t need to take my word for it. Just read the Masterplan. Yaro has put together a very compelling story and followed it up with a very detailed plan so you can do it yourself.
You can get your FREE copy of the Membership Site Masterplan now.
Posted by karooch on
April 16, 2009
Advertising on Blogs
Almost all craft blogs carry some sort of advertising, even if it’s just hosting banners and blinkies for friends.
A couple of weeks ago we started to explore the world of advertising on craft blogs, and we took a look at direct advertising methods and affiliate promotions.
In this article we’ll have a look at some other advertising options that you might like to consider for your scrapbooking and craft blogs.
Google Adwords
You are probably familiar with the Google ads that can be inserted into the text or the sidebar of your blog. And now they also offer graphic based ads.
The way they work is that every person who clicks on a Google Adwords link on your blog will generate a few cents of income for the blog owner. So in order to get some reasonable income you need to have a large number of clickers.
Google selects the ads based on the context of the words in your post. What this means is that, depending on what you have talked about in your post, the ads will try to match. So if you talked about a scrapbook layout of your son riding his new bike, there’s every chance you’ll find your readers presented with ads about bikes.
You can set your Google Adwords to appear in your side-bar, above or below your post or even in the middle of the post itself. Statistics have indicated that a higher percentage of visitors click on ads placed inside your post than in the side-bar.
I recommend that you monitor your statistics firstly to work out where the optimum ad placing for your blog is, and also to see if they are actually worthwhile at all. I tried Google Adwords on Scraps of Mind in early 2008 and the results were not exactly stellar. So I removed them. After all, if no one is clicking on them, they why give them valuable blog space?
And please don’t stick them all over your blog. As a reader I do find it annoying to keep having the post interrupted by a block of ads. And I’m sure I’m not alone.
Text Link Ads
Text link ads are not as popular as they once were. But many websites will pay for you to host their link on your blog.
There are a number of brokers who will find text link advertisers for you so you don’t have to go looking for them. All you need to do is sign up to a free account with the broker and add some code they provide you in a widget on your side bar. They will then populate the widget with text links as they find the advertisers.
You have the right of refusal if you don’t like the site that your blog is being linked to so you don’t need to worry about hosting porn links or anything like that.
I have previously hosted text link ads on Scraps of Mind from TLA and that generated a nice little income stream.
However there is a downside.
If you are at all interested in your Google page rank then this is not a good strategy. Google frowns on link buying and selling and will downgrade your page ranking accordingly.
This actually happened to me last year when Google smacked me down from Page Rank 4 to Page Rank 2. It’s OK to have links with the ‘no-follow’ tag but the brokers do not use that because it’s not what their customers want.
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