To get around a lack of quality promotion materials or the fact that I am using an indirect affiliate service like Amazon I have started to use my own affiliate banners.  They look good and they are unique to me so my visitors know I REALLY DO like these products. Here are some examples I just started using last month.

There are two main ways that a site visitor can subscribe to your web site/blog or your “feed”.  They can subscribe by adding it to their feed reader or they can subscribe by email. Both have advantages and disadvantages.

Personally I choose to subscribe to my favorite sites using a feed reader. My personal favorite is the built-in Internet Explorer feed reader. Most of my own readers also subscribe via feed reader. I do have the option though for email subscriptions. Some people like to be notified of new content with an email either daily or weekly. Others, like me, may subscribe to so many RSS feeds that they would be bombarded with emails. I like to read on my own time.

But it is still important to let your visitors choose for themselves. You can allow for email subscriptions through services like Feedburner or FeedBlitz. I chose Aweber to manage my RSS email subscriptions because it allowed for many options that other places didn’t offer and it has ended up being a very savvy way to market to my readers. For one monthly price I can host as many newsletters and feeds as I want so if you have more than one site…Aweber is awesome.

When my readers subscribe via RSS they get an email about once a week with links to all the content for that week. I set it up to look like a newsletter rather than a random group of links so that I can get my affiliate links in front of more eyeballs each week. My main blog has about 1400 email subscribers and this is what they see every week. It matches my web site colors, it links to new and fresh content, and it has affiliate links or text link ads from advertisers. Ever since I switched to this format for email subscribers I have had better retention rates and more sales. Even if MOST people like feed readers it is just silly to let pass an opportunity to email your readers directly on a regular basis.

You can completely customize what your Youtube landing page looks like with background image, custom, html, and widgets. You can add an avatar, bio, and lots of personal information, including a link to your web site. I spent about 10 minutes on mine just to spruce it up and make the colors match my main site. If people stumble upon your videos through Youtube or search engines you have a chance to sell them on your web site as well. It is an opportunity to market yourself a bit more so why not?

Check out my YouTube Channel.

First I did a redesign…nothing fancy. I just wanted to give it a “family” feel. Here is the old:

And here is the new:

Looks good eh? I went through it and changed affiliate links and generally did some tweaking. I left Adsense in place but this week I am removing most of it. I would like to highlight the affiliate products I am promoting on each page instead. I also deleted a few of the autoresponder messages and added a half dozen of my own, using recycled content from another site. I really like how responsive this list is! They email me back to let me know what they think and I had some pretty decent Amazon conversions last month. I have already had over 300 new subscribers just since I took the site over.

This site has shown me the importance of fully using autoresponders for online business and list management. I can’t wait to build upon my other ones…which are pitiful in comparision to the volume and content of the tv list.

I might just start buying established sites more often too.

You can now buy The Natural Child article pack with ten superbly written articles for only $12.97. In a world filled with consumerism and technology it can be hard to parent naturally and raise kids who are connected with the natural world around them. This plr article pack addresses many of the ways that parents can help their children to establish that connection and gives them sound ideas on how to parent more naturally and harmoniously.

Check out the article titles and word counts here. If you have a web site that caters to parents then you are sure to love this new pack!

Day 8. Craft a great resource-list. Resource lists are very popular with social media and can be quite easy to make, particularly if you already have the resources on hand. Pick a topic your target audience is keenly interested in and create a list of resources relating to that topic. You can use your own bookmarks if you have enough. If you’re short on links, a del.icio.us search for your topic will return hundreds if useful links people have saved using your chosen topic as a keyword.

Woot! Another one bites the dust. Some of most popular blog posts are actually resource lists although I never thought of them in those terms before. Not only do I get awesome comments on these posts but I get more backlinks too….TONS of backlinks. Oh and sales….let’s not forget those. My resource pages get daily sales.

They were a lot of work to put together but so worth it. Here are some examples of my resources pages:

Eco Friendly Birthday Party

Eco Friendly School Supplies

Technorati Tags: blogging, resource pages, sales

Day 5. Highlight your most popular posts. Linking to your blog’s most popular posts in a prominent location is essential practice, because it gives new visitors a place to go. They don’t have time to search around for good content: the want to see the best you have to offer, straight away. Linking to popular posts can help ensure that the links and comments keep coming, even after the post is several months old.

Woot! This is another one I already have done…I guess I was a pretty darn good blogger already eh? When I had my blog re-designed about 3  or 4 months ago I asked the designer to widgetize the blog so that I could add new header categories with ease. One of the things I wanted the most was a “Greatest Hits” section. So you will find on my Naturemoms blog a header called Greatest Hits and under it are my most popular blog posts.

Why exactly is this important? Well, I chose those particular posts because they draw in the most traffic, the most searches, and the most money. And they are really kind of the best of the best as far as good and useful content goes. When new visitors come to my blog I want them to be able to look at that Greatest Hits list and see other blog posts that they are sure to love. The more they see and like the more likely they will become an RSS or email subscriber and regular reader.

Here is the goal:

Day 3. Write a week’s worth of posts in advance. Developing the habit of writing in advance will give you a safety net of content to fall back on when you’re lazy, busy or uninspired. Writing and posting in the same time-frame will inevitably lead to an erratic posting habit, because your readers will never know what to expect from you. Write enough posts in advance and you could also earn the right to a blogging holiday.

This is another aspect of the challenge that I pretty much already do. I don’t do it all the time but on an as needed basis. It is typical for me to have 1 or 2 posts a week prewritten and scheduled to go out. I also have quite a few posts saved as drafts where I have come up with an idea that sounds good so I write a blog title and intro and I inlcude relevent links to help me research. Then when I am looking for something to write about I browse through my drafts and select one I want to expand on.

On my NatureMoms blog I do a weekly wrap up of cool links and products I have found. This post exists as a draft usually for about a week collecting new links as I find them and it gets published on Fridays. If it weren’t for this feature I would “lose” a lot of the great ideas I get. Sometimes a blog is a lifesaver.

Technorati Tags: blogs, schedule posts, save as draft

Day 2. Start using more images in your posts. Readers like images — they help set the tone of your blog post, illustrate metaphors and generally make your posts more interesting to look at. You can use a free stock photography service, but you can also use sensational Flickr images.

This is one aspect of blogging that I already have covered…there might be a few in this challenge. 99% of the time I use images with each blog post. Why? Because personally I am MUCH more likely to be drawn in and read the blog if it has cool pictures. I am a very visual person so I am just more attracted to a visually appealing blog with nice graphics.

Several of my most popular posts on my NatureMoms blog are heavy on the pictures. I even get comments from readers that they find all the pictures helpful. When I am recommending a product and telling my readers how awesome it is…I include a nice picture and they are more likely to click on that picture and buy…resulting in commissions for me. If I take my own pictures of the products they also know I REALLY tried it.

Using pictures when you recommend a product (which I do alot) is like a salesman using a demo model. I believe that my Amazon sales jumped so much last year in large part because I starting using pictures religiously. They convey things that your words can’t sometimes.

Even if my blog post is not intended to “sell” anything…I still find that pictures draw people in. So for this challenge I am calling it mission accomplished.

The benefit of Blog Carnivals are really not touted enough in my opinion. They do many things for my blog…they increase traffic, they increase my technorati ranking and link popularity, and they increase my income. Blogcarnival.com is the main hub where you can find carnivals to join. Basically a carnival host sets up a carnival for a certain niche…let’s say green widgets. Then everyone who blogs about green widgets can submit their post to the carnival host for consideration. The carnival host chooses some or all of the submitted posts and creates a special article on their blog that links to all the submissions one by one. Readers that are interested in the subject of green widgets visit all the blogs that appear to have interesting green widget information…increasing your traffic.

If you join carnivals on a regular basis then you are constantly getting new links to your blog. Even if you submit to the green widget carnival every time they have a new edition (let’s say every two weeks) you still might be getting new links as many carnivals rotate hosts to spread the link love. Links to your blog increases your link popularity and potentially your search engine ranking. It also helps you to rank better with Technorati and that is good news becuase many blog ad networks and pay per post networks require a good tehnorati ranking to participate in their programs. Your technorati ranking can be directly impacting your ability to make money with your blog.

Blog Tours  can be very similar to a carnival. Sometimes they are just an organized group of bloggers that all post about a certain topic and link out to each other. I have participated in a few of those and I really like them. However, the type of blog tour that I was referring to above are organized groups that attract bloggers to review products. The blogger signs ups to participate in blog tours. Large companies and book publishers contact the tour organization to help them spread the word about their new product or book. The organization then solicits bloggers within their network to review these items and write reviews for their blogs. The bloggers that get accepted then get the review products via mail and they write their reviews according to the tour schedule.

The benefit to the blogger is free product, links from the tour organizer, and sometime compensation as well. I did a dozen or so blog tours last year and for half of them the biggest perk was free product but for others I got paid anywhere from $20-50 per tour with Amazon gift certificates and I got the free product. Last year I reviewed books, software, and food for the most part. Not long ago I got a free educational  computer program for my son and then I got paid to write about how he liked it. Pretty cool.

So if you want to get more out of blogging don’t forget to join the tour and go to the carnival.

Need something worthwile to blog about? Check out Natural Mom Plr.

Technorati Tags: blog tour, blog carnival, product review, make money blogging