BlogRush Approval and Policies

Well the Monetizer is pleased to announce this blog here passed the rigorous and tough standards set forth by BlogRush. I was just a bit worried after reading a recent blog entry where the Cow was banned from BlogRush. However, BlogRush sent email to say The Monetizer blog met up with their quality control guidelines. Cool deal.

Despite this, recent postings on the BlogRush blog have indicated that BlogRush wants you to place the widget on your blog higher up, if it isn't already. They say if they discover you aren't pulling the "clicks" they want, they will remove you from the program. Hmmmm... While I like the concept of BlogRush, I don't think they should be dictating how their widget is placed or used, because it's being put on someone else's internet real estate. It's obvious that the bigger bloggers are going to get more traffic (ProBlogger, Shoemoney or John Chow). But placing this widget above your "recent posts" or "Archives" on the sidebar doesn't seem idealistic for the smaller blogger who wants people to read and visit their blog.

Hopefully BlogRush won't be too strict with this requirement on behalf of the "little bloggers" of the blogosphere. Also, it's been a long time they have been saying "we're working on a better statistics dashboard". Granted, this is a free widget/service that can benefit the user for free, but the people signing up for it will want to see what it's doing for their blog. Otherwise rolling out this Beta item just looks premature.

This post is just a mini-rant. Monetizer has heard people reporting a bit of extra traffic from the widget so it must be doing something!

Using Google's Free Services

Many people love using Google for its great search engine features. It offers some of the best, fine-tuned and accurate results of all the engines. However, many people may not be aware of the vast amount of great tools Google offers you, all for free. These tools range from blogging platforms, social media sites, to free web page creators and keyword/seo analysis tools.

It's highly recommended to start out by signing up for a free Gmail account. Use your name as the Gmail address or use your unique blog or site name, at Gmail.com. From there you can start to launch into these many other great FREE tools Google offers for bloggers and site owners.

Blogger - This is one most people know about, the free blogging platform of choice for the blog rookie and less-web savvy. Google took this over within the past year or so and Blogger has gone through some nice upgrades making it even easier for the novice to start blogging. Blogger's widget feature makes it easy for a new blogger to add link lists, pictures, html code and Adsense right onto their blog. Not bad for a free blogging platform where you can easily start to make money, without paying any to do so.

Google Adsense - Many people know of this one. A program that's free for site owners and blog owners to use, implement and profit from. Adsense gives you code to put into your site that matches contextual ads to your site's content. You get paid revenue based on ad impressions and clicks. Read Monetizer's "Introduction to Adsense 101" here.

Google Adwords - This is a program you will pay to use, but it can help you advertise your blog, site or product. You'll be buying ads on other sites and have to put in keyword research. The free tool this provides that is very useful to use is the Keyword Tool here as described below.

Google Base - Monetizer learned about this promotional tool in the past few weeks. According to the site: "Google Base is a place where you can easily submit all types of online and offline content, which we'll make searchable on Google (if your content isn't online yet, we'll put it there). You can describe any item you post with attributes, which will help people find it when they do related searches". It's basically yet another place to advertise products and yes even a blog or website. It's free to list your product/site, and there's a Squidoo lens which explains how to do that here. (The lens discusses adding Squidoo pages to Google Base but you can substitute your blog or website in).

Google Analytics - An invaluable tool for all webmasters and bloggers this will track and measure your site traffic, visitor trends, top pages viewed and search engine results that brought you traffic. Very important to integrate this early into your blog or site and then monitor it to make the proper changes to your content and site. At Analytics you will provide your site domain and a few other pieces of info, then insert special Javascript code into your blog or site's HTML. Analytics will go to work soon after tracking your site stats. One tip is to keep an eye on any search engine traffic you might be getting. Focus on coverage of those topics if they tend to be highly searched terms bringing visitors to your site.

Google Reader - One of the better RSS feed readers or aggregators, it will collect all the RSS feeds you subscribe to in one nice, neat location. Makes for easy browsing and reading of all your favorite blogs and sites as they update. A tip here is to make sure you subscribe to your own RSS feed(s) and then you can monitor them as others will see them.

Google Page Creator - create your own free webpages. They will be hosted on the googlepages.com domain, so whatever you choose for the title will precede that. For example you may make a site called ParisHiltonFans, so the site will be http://parishiltonfans.googlepages.com. Despite that lengthy and ackward domain, you can still leverage this to create a website in conjunction with a free blog. It's great for novices who want to have their own site, and the great thing, Google does not place ads on your free pages, but you can do so.

Google Keyword Tool - A great free tool for Search Engine Optimization. Type in a few terms that you consider keywords for your blog or site and then let Keyword Tool go to work. This tool will list out other relevant keywords and phrases you may want to consider implementing in your SEO strategies. DoshDosh has a great post which discusses using this tool with longtail keyword phrase strategies.

Google Suggest - This tool comes from the Google labs and can be very helpful for your SEO strategies as well. As you type into the search box, Google will present suggested search phrases based on their popularity of search. What's neat is that it will show you the number of Google search results for their suggested terms as well. With that you can find good keyword phrases that might have low search results, and then use that to your advantage to rank high for search engine traffic on those terms. For example you may look up Paris Hilton and notice there is a popular Paris Hilton search phrase with only 100-1,000 or low results. Creating a clever blog entry with that phrase in the title just might bring you some nice search engine traffic.

Orkut - This is Google's social media answer to Myspace which many people have probably never heard of. While not as good looking or feature-packed as Facebook or Myspace can be, this site is in the top 10 consistently for Alexa's site traffic rank. It's worth checking out and maybe using as another free social media promotional tool.

Webmaster Tools - More helpful tools for the webmaster and blog owner. Submit your blog or site's sitemap. Analyze errors with the crawling Google does of your site and see how many of your blog or site pages are actually indexed in Google's search engine. Very helpful to make sure your site pages can be discovered in the Google search engines.

What's great about just about everything above, is they are FREE to use, and you can use them in some way to help with your online money making efforts. Why not enjoy the free services Google offers to set up a Blogger blog, cross-promote it with a free webpage on Page creator, and use Google's Webmaster Tools and Analytics to help revise and improve your rankings? It makes a ton of sense to sign up for these services for free and use them to your full advantage ASAP.

5 Ways to Make People Leave Your Site

Whenever I visit other sites to get news for my blogs or just to read the latest stories, the Monetizer always takes note quickly of website annoyances. These most likely aren't just irking the Monetizer but the majority of visitors and it makes you wonder why the site owners are running a site without thinking of how they want to be seen. Here's a quick list of 5 major annoyances Monetizer has noticed amongst some poorly set up sites.

1) Make it hard to find information - If the Monetizer was looking for something and visits a site then sees absolutely nothing related, he's leaving. Some people believe in "tricking" the system by loading up on meta keywords unrelated to their site page just to get traffic. Big mistake, play by the rules if you want real traffic. It's understandable if you want to just attract traffic for Adsense, but be realistic about the audience you want continuously visiting your site. This is especially true if you're blogging. The inability to find something a search engine produced isn't always the site's fault though. Google or other search engines may be somewhat to blame in the search results they are returning.

You could add to this tip the concept of "poor site navigation". If someone arrives at your site and can't find their way around in a relatively easy manner, they're probably leaving (which probably goes back to the trick of setting up sites just for Adsense).

2) Use those Dreaded Pop-Up Ads - Believe it or not, there's some sites (and I won't name names) that still believe in tricking visitors with HUGE pop-up ads. The question becomes do you want people visiting your site or not? When they go to the site to read an article and have a huge wall blocking their view, why would they want to come back again? When their purpose for visiting your site is to read what you have to say and then they have to try to click out of a huge box in their face, is that fair to them? One site I can recall has this happening constantly whenever you try to move to another part of the site. The year is 2007 and it's time to ditch that tactic in lieu of keeping people coming back to your site and allowing them to see what they want.

3) Create Overloaded, slow loading sites - This works in conjunction with #2 sometimes, but there are some sites that just are set up so poorly it takes forever to finally see some info you want to read. The site keeps loading and loading, because it has a ton of java script ads, pictures and other items installed. The person who designed it thinks they've jammed it full of cool, attractive stuff, but in reality it's a major pain to their visitors. Take some time to research ways to make your site load quickly, then worry about sponsorship ads and java tricks. Also, there are ways to put java code into seperate files versus right into the site's HTML code.

4) Use redirects to unrelated pages - Again there are some sites that redirect you away from what you clicked on to visit or read. You may have seen a headline, clicked it and then all of a sudden you're taken away from the page you were on or wanted to see. It makes little sense and this will only serve to irritate a visitor and make them "click out" or away from your site because they aren't getting what they came for.

5) Use Fakeness or Copycatting - Monetizer has visited sites with fake headlines at the end of a news story or entry which seem set up just to get people to visit another site. You take the "bait" click on the headline and arrive at a site full of more headlines that are real, but don't see the one you wanted to read about. This is a VERY poor tactic because while it may capture someone's short term interest, it will really irritate a person when they get to a site and find out that info was fake.

You could add to this point the concept that abounds on the internet of people stealing other people's blog entries and copying site design so they can make a fast buck. Very uncool and most likely when you get found out, things will just come crashing down. Avoid it. In keeping with politeness, John Cow has a post written prior to this about 5 Reasons he Stopped Reading Your Blog.

Amazingly, the Monetizer found all 5 of these mistakes listed above on just one website alone. Rest easy though, it was not a "Make Money" or "SEO" blog, but a totally different niche. The lesson here is to always view your site just as you were the customer or reader visiting it. Does it meet your expectations and standards for a site you want to check out further?

Basically if you're running a website the best policy is "do unto others as you would have done to you". It's a simple rule to go by, think about yourself as the reader when visiting a site and what you would really want to tolerate. Would you want to have to click out of Pop Up ads or wait up to 30 seconds or a minute to get the info you want, when you're using high speed internet? It's common consideration but more importantly it's what will keep people returning to your website because you've designed it to be"user friendly".

Blog Promotion Items You Need

When it comes to marketing or promoting your blog or website, it can be a rough road because many sites will require you to provide certain bits of info, over and over and over. Blog and RSS directories for example all differ in what they might ask for. Some may just ask for an RSS feed or your blog's URL, while others will ask for much more detailed info. Here's some tips on what you might keep handy in a folder for your blog or website before you embark upon submitting to directories and listing sites.

- Create a 468x60 banner for your blog or site. Many directories will include your banner when visitors check out your info. This can also be used for your personal signature on many forums as well as on your Myspace or other social media profiles. There are online animated GIF creation programs if you want to get fancy with this too. You could also use the rotating blog headline display that Feedburner provides you, which should fit this size and work well to promote your material.

- Create a 100x100 icon of your blog or self image. Sites like MyBlogLog, BlogCatalog and many many social media sites will ask for an avatar image. This size will be handy and can easily be resized or scaled down for whatever measurements are required. You may consider making a few icons though of different sizes (48x48, 64x64 and 100x100) just to have several on hand.

- Keep a text or word document with all of the following info:

Your blog's title.
Your Blog/Site URL
Your Blog/Site RSS URL
A description of your blog or website (100 words or less)
Your contact email
Keywords separated by commas (just in case)

The above info is very helpful when completing numerous directory submissions. It can be quite tedious to continually have to enter all of that, especially the description of your blog or site. The above will also help with many social media sites because some are allowing for input of your RSS and other info these days.

Keeping all of the above in a folder for your blog will be a great way to stay organized when you go to join social media sites and submit your blog/site to directories. I keep seperate text documents for RSS/URL's for blogs as well as a document of links from blogs, etc. Both are easily accessible for when a copy/paste may be needed. You may consider keeping a text document full of your top blog/site links for when you are commenting other blogs or forums. This can help greatly with "deep linking", a practice which in same cases helps your Google and other search engine status. Be prepared and then begin your quest to start getting your blog or site's name out there!

There's a nice list of blog and RSS directories you can submit to here at TopRankBlog.

Also see Best Blog Directory And RSS Submission Sites.