Learn from the Best - 5 Blogs to Consider

If your goal is blogging for income, then you have to start somewhere and always be learning what works and doesn't work. The Monetizer is far from an expert and is constantly researching and learning new concepts to use in blogging, promoting and making money online. To stay on top of your game and find new ideas, it's a good idea to familiarize yourself with some of the best bloggers and money makers online today.

Here's 5 blogs in particular that the Monetizer enjoys:

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1) John Chow - A very inspirational online money maker, he blogs about the ways you can make money online and provides his monthly earnings each month on his blog. August 2007 income was over $17,000! He also is nearing the 10,000 mark in terms of subscribers to his blog.

Monetizer enjoys Mr. Chow's posts despite a few grammatical/spelling errors here or there and having to look at pictures of various buffet lunch items. Regardless of that, John Chow is making big bucks from blogging and you should study his ways.

http://www.johnchow.com

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2) John Cow - Parodying the big guy, John Chow, is the Cow. They started a blog which slightly mocks the idea of John Chow but still provides readers ways to make money and profit online. Smart guys, because if someone mistypes Johnchow.com, they just might end up at the Cow's blog.

While some say this is a copycat of John Chow's success it's actually creative and entertaining. Written from the perspective of sarcastic cows making "moo-ney", this blog is highly worth your time. It also features a very clever and catchy brand new blog site design as well as constant mention of contests from the Cow and other sites.

http://www.johncow.com

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3) DoshDosh - A very stylish and useful blog written with all sorts of great information about making money online, blogging, optimization, social media and productivity. It's got the tools and tips you'll need and is presented in very understandable terms. You'll find yourself returning to its easy to understand nature and helpful resources very often.

http://www.doshdosh.com

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4) Problogger - Darren Rowse is another one of the top bloggers along with John Chow. In fact Chow, Rowse and Shoe (below) are considered the "Big 3" in blogging for money. These guys make a ton of money and are "full time bloggers", meaning it's their job to blog and they get a solid income from it.

Learn from Rowse, an expert blogger, and gain his unique insights into how the monetized blog can work for you. Rowse covers things such as setting up your blog, tweaking its design/optimization, gaining readers, as well as trends and ideas on how to be a more productive blogger.

http://www.problogger.net

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5)ShoeMoney - Another great blog about blogging, technology and ways to make money. Bookmark this one, which at times goes into other topics such as Mixed Martial Arts and celebrities. Shoemoney offers unique perspectives on blogging, making money online and many other topics. It also includes a stylish and captivating new design.

You'll find a multitude of great ideas and inspiration from the Shoe!

http://www.shoemoney.com

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Several of the above bloggers have recently undergone "makeovers" for their blogs and some of the design concepts turned out quite nice. Enjoy them, learn from them, and realize there are a TON of blogs out there about Making Money. Each blog will have different perspectives and ideas of just how it's done, so it makes sense to pull knowledge from as many areas as you can. Consider Chow, Cow, Dosh, Rowse & Shoe because they are amongst the cream of the crop in online money making blogs and will present you some great ideas to get yourself going. Bookmark all 5, get their RSS feeds, and be on your way to being up there with the best. Also consider being a frequent commenter on these heavily traveled blogs, as it just may help bring you more readers.

For honorable mention, here's 3 others you may be interested in checking out:

Super Affiliate ZacJohnson - Includes very good commentary on the blogging world and on what trends he believes will work or not work for making money online.

The Blogging Experiment - This is done by another blogger, Ben Cook, looking to build from the ground up, with some great tips and resources. He also has given himself a year to turn his blog from $0 into a full time income.

kottke.org - This is not really a make money online blog, but he makes money online with the blog :)

Building the Blog Strategies Part 1

The Monetizer Blog is relatively new, and as mentioned before it is fully experimental in nature. There are many bloggers and "gurus" out there who toss a blog or site up blindly and act like they know how to make money. The Monetizer won't lie to you pretending to be a millionaire or Donald Trump. Instead, like most others, The Monetizer is looking to earn online and provide feedback, ideas and commentary on the ways to do it. It's also important to note there are guys online who are getting it right and who have made success, and some even suggest staying away from the "Make Money Online" topic. Monetizer has to disagree.

If you use enough passion, creativity, drive and determination, your blog can be just as or more successful then those top dog bloggers. Blogging or online success isn't achieved easily (unless you already have fame or recognition), and it's highly doubtful any of the gurus got to where they are without a large amount of work put in. The Monetizer relies on information and resources collected through research where else - the world wide web. So buckle up and enjoy this ride. Fresh new ideas can lead you to ideas of your own and then "you will find a path towards success, wealth and happiness" - that was in a fortune cookie once.

Here are some of the current strategies The Monetizer is looking at and using, and you might want to look at integrating these for your own promotion strategies:

- Developing BRAND NEW Squidoo lens page and trying to network, gain traffic, ratings and rankings.

- Building up network of friends with MyBlogLog

- Submitting site to search engines, Blog directories and RSS directories

- Myspace profile and networking

- Using BlogRush widget for potential incoming traffic

- Use of Blogtoplist, a blog network with rankings system

These are just a few of the ideas and campaigns The Monetizer has started working on, and you may consider them for yourself as well. The goal here is to grow this blog from the ground up. This may help others see what works or doesn't work if you're looking for new ideas and inspiration in developing your own blog into a money maker. Set yourself daily goals in terms of your blog or site and it's promotion, and put in that effort daily to make it grow. And remember to enjoy the ride as well as relax from time to time :)

Feel free to leave any strategies you think are effective as well. After all, the internet makes for a great, open exchange of ideas and money making opportunities..

Working With Feedburner and RSS

If you just started a blog on Blogger, Wordpress or elsewhere, or you've been blogging for a little while but payed no attention to RSS, it's time to Feed your need. You should definitely head over to Feedburner.com. Feedburner is an amazingly free RSS feed service that will help hook your blog up with a unique RSS feed and many, many more great features (including potential money making).

According to Wikipedia, the definition of RSS feed is:

"RSS is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines or podcasts. An RSS document, which is called a "feed", "web feed", or "channel", contains either a summary of content from an associated web site or the full text. RSS makes it possible for people to keep up with their favorite web sites in an automated manner that's easier than checking them manually."

This is what the Monetizer's RSS feed URL looks like:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheMonetizer-MakingMoney

To get yours, go to Feedburner, enter your blog's URL link and sign up for free. Feedburner then gives you an RSS feed for your blog, which will allow you to offer the feed to your readers. You can place small widgets on your blog allowing readers to subscribe to your feed in a feed reader of their choice (Google, Yahoo, AOL, etc). This keeps your readers up to date as you provide any new blog entries. You can add a area of your blog that allows visitors to sign up to receive email updates from your blog as there is new content.

You can also set up widgets that display your blog's latest headlines (to promote your blog on other sites) and monitor your feed's performance as well as subscriber stats and more. In addition, Feedburner offers an Adsense style advertising program that will insert payed ads into your feeds (once you have a big enough amount of traffic and rank). It also has a setting where you can put your Amazon Associates ID (discussed previously here), and anytime a product in your blog is selling at Amazon, Feedburner will provide a link from your text, which means possible commission of a sale. It's a very valuable tool in the world of blogging, and if you're not using it already, make sure to get started as soon as possible.

What to Do With Your RSS Feed

One you have your RSS feed setup at Feedburner, you can then take the RSS feed URL you created, and start to submit it to various search engines, blog directories and RSS directories.

Blogsearchengine.com has a great comprehensive list of where to submit your blog RSS feed to. This will help get your blog entries out to the rest of the internet, so that you can possibly benefit from more readers, or search engine traffic finding your feed and your blog.

The Monetizer recommends spending a little bit of time each day to submit your feed to the various sites listed. Maybe set yourself a goal of 5-10 submits a day. The more the merrier.

It's also highly recommended that you create a small text document which includes the following details:

- Your blog Title

- Your blog's URL

- Your RSS feed URL

- A list of 10 keywords (comma seperated) that describe what your blog is about.

- A short description of your blog content (maybe 2-4 lines describing your blog to someone new). Try to make it exciting, captivating and clever, to catch a potential reader's attention. If they see something they like, a simple click, and they are at your blog and potentially your next loyal fan.

Create a notepad or text document containing the above info and save it on your computer. The reason you want the above info handy, is that many of the RSS and Blog directories ask for these same things. It's better to have them all ready, so you can copy and paste, versus typing them each over and over again.

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The other thing to remember, once you have a Feedburner RSS feed, is to head over to both Pingomatic.com and Pingoat.com. Enter your blog title, blog URL, and RSS URL into them both and "Ping" the services. It will notify 10-40 different directory services that your blog is there and has fresh content. As mentioned before, once you ping, these sites will tell you to bookmark the page, because you can easily return to that page and it will automatically ping with your info.

Several of the Social Media sites also allow you to integrate your RSS feeds into your profile or page very nicely, which makes a ton of sense as you start to build friends and connections there. One example is Facebook. Facebook will take and display your latest RSS feed and even offers a special tool to allow others to share your blog RSS headlines with others. Basically, that translates into promoting your blog to more people. Squidoo also offers an RSS module, which you can stick into your "lens" page. The module auto-updates with your blog headlines as you post new ones. Pretty nifty, and you've got your blog headlines there to capture a passer-by's attention.

There's also some cool sites out there such as Feedblitz which allow you to submit your RSS and build widgets that will let others display your blog's latest headlines on their various social media pages or websites. BlogRush is the latest to create one of these widgets, and that can also take your RSS feed and translate it to visitors.

Hopefully this will help you on your way to using RSS Feeds to start getting your blog more noticed. A little time each day will bring you even closer to a bigger blog audience and more monetization opportunities.

The Monetizer Invades Squidoo!

Realizing the importance of Social media these days, The Monetizer proudly announces his new Squidoo page: Make Money Online. The Squidoo page is a work in progress but will be used to promote this blog as well as teach others various money making opportunities, better blogging, internet tips, promoting, SEO and much, much more. Squidoo will be an experiment, since the Monetizer has heard good and bad about using it. However, Social Media sites like this simply can't be ignored.

Sites like Myspace, Facebook and Orkut get too much traffic to disregard them as places to promote your product, website or blog. Building up networks of targeted users who share similar interests will go a long way to building a potential base of blog readers, customers and referrals.

One of the relatively newer players in this Social Media game has been Squidoo, a product of the genius thinking of Seth Godin. This product basically allows readers to create a webpage known as a "lens". A lens captures your unique perspective on a topic you are passionate and knowledgeable about. For example you may be passionate about wine-tasting, photography, pets, nature, web design, vintage cars or science. The lens will allow you to discuss, promote and educate people with a topic of your choice. You choose your topic, title, tag words and begin building. Squidoo offers an array of "modules" to integrate into your unique page, include RSS feeds, text areas, list areas, Amazon products, Ebay ads for related products and customizable polls about your topic. There are many possibilities in using Squidoo to promote your work.

Which brings the Monetizer to discussing his latest lens, which is Make Money Online, a Monetizer meets Squidoo project. Monetizer has set up a Squidoo lens to try to realize any potential traffic gains from the search engines or Squidoo users themselves. The use of Google Analytics (something highly worth installing in your blog code) should help gauge this, as well as seeing the Squidoo page come up in any search engine listings.

It's recommended that you sign yourself up for Squidoo and set up a lens page to promote your current project(s). Squidoo allows a lot of flexibility and also allows you to make as many of these lenses as you choose. If you have a broad topic, set up 5 or more lenses to help promote your project. Having your promotions displayed in enough places gives you more chances at catching someone's eye and building your audience. And the bonus to this is, you can potentially earn money from your Squidoo lens, based on the ads displayed on your site by Squidoo, the amount of views you get, and get commissions from any purchased Amazon or Ebay products you recommend/pitch/add on your page (with Squidoo modules).

And feel free to stop by and show some love for the new Monetizer Squidoo page while you're at it :)